How to Make a Simple Cover for Your Loose Junk Journal Pages

What do you do when your loose pages start multiplying?

This post is for those of you who use loose sheets of paper (plain or decorated) rather than a notebook, although this should also work for notebooks, particularly for the ones with a soft cover. I mainly use decorated double pages, as I create them, and after a while I have been thinking of an organised way to keep them. You can bind them like a book, and if you search “Signatures binding” on the internet, you will find lots of tutorial. 

But to be honest, I didn’t want to do all this and also, I wanted to be able to change the order in which my pages were organised, specifically for my memory keeping ones, which are organised alphabetically but which I write as it comes to my mind, so NOT alphabetically. 

So, my idea was to create a cover that I could decorate as I wanted, and attach my pages in it with ribbons.

I use A4 pages folded in two, so each measures, when folded, 21 x 14.8 cm or 8.3 x 5.8 inches. I have therefore cut three pieces of cardboard, two measuring 23.5 x 17 cm or 9.3 x 6.7 inches and one measuring 23.5 x 6.3 cm or 9.3 x 2.5 inches. I buy binding cardboard, 1.5mm thick, but you could experiment with any cardboard you have at home.

If you use pages measuring 11” x 8.5”, when folded, their dimensions will be 8.5” x 5.5”. You would then want to cut two pieces of cardboard measuring 9.5” x 6.4” and one measuring 9.5” x 2.5”

I then attached them together with masking tape, leaving a 0.4 cm gap or 0.15 inch between each piece. The easiest way I find to do this is to have a piece of cardboard (or anything rigid) of the right thickness and use it when you attach the pieces together.

Now it’s time to cover it. As I live in jeans, I have quite a collection of old ones so that’s what I used for the outside of the cover. I glued my cover to it using binding glue, but any strong glue should work. I left about 5cm or 2 inches around the cardboard. I then cut the corners and glued the material on the inside of the cover.

As one of my other hobbies is quilting, I have quite a lot of material, so I used some of it for the inside. If you don’t have material at home, you can buy some, use old clothes that you were about to throw away, or even buy something in a charity shop and use the material for it, it would be cheaper than buying fabric.

Whatever you decide to use, you can then glue it inside the cover.

Then you can decorate it, the fun bit. Remember that you will attach the pages to the back with ribbons, so it might not be a good idea to decorate the back. I like to have a label to write down which period it covers, and maybe a tag to write down the most important things written in it. But how you decorate it is totally up to you, and it is time to let your creativity express itself! The freebie this fortnight is 8 labels with different themes.

Then I attached my pages to this cover using ribbons. The best thing about this method is that nothing is permanent. If I decide that a page belongs somewhere else, I simply untie the ribbon and move it. If I have another memory to add, I can add another page. It may not have the neat, finished look of a traditionally bound journal, but for me, the flexibility is much more important.

I hope you have found this post useful, happy creating!