How to: making personalized notepads

Sara has totally adorable personalized notepad designs, which she sells on her site, Sarah + Abraham, but even better than that, she has generously offered to show the world how to make their own notepads.

While she can’t help you make them more adorable than your own graphic design skills allow for, I might have some tips for you.

According to her notepad-making tutorial, the materials you need are:

• About 15 sheets of 8.5 x 11″ paper
• Paper cutter so that you can cut sheets in to fourths
• Chipboard for the back of your notepad
• Padding compound is the dried glue stuff that makes the top of the notepad stay together
• Something strong or heavy to hold notepad together while it dries (binder clips or a box of books)

The elements of this recipe with which I was not familiar are the chipboard and the padding compound. So let’s take a look at those:

Chipboard is found at any craft store. I found it in this format on Amazon., a 25-pack for about $8.00.

The padding compound recommended by Sara is this one. This stuff is not really found at Michael’s or JoAnn Fabrics, so if you want to experiment with notepad making, you’ll have to order it. Here are some choices on Amazon.

The steps to cut the paper, line it up on the chipboard, and brush on the adhesive are detailed on Oh My Handmade.

How will you personalize your notepads? Using Word or another program, set your page size to 4×6 or whatever size you want your notepad to be.  Then, create a header and footer. A few options:

• Lettering. Simply use words with a font and color scheme you like.
• Find some clip art online. Silhouette-style images like the one in Sarah’s notepad above can be found with a Google search on “silhouette clip art of children”.
• Free downloads. Generous creative types like Amy of Living Locurto and Jessica of How About Orange often post downloadable goodies that you can use for this purpose. I love these wedding save the dates and think you could input your children’s names, save the image, paste it into word and crop out all the wedding details you don’t need.
• Scan something you love. Your own handwriting, a child’s drawing, or an illustration from a board book.

Notepad too complicated? How about a set of letter stationery – omit the binding!  This free download is another treat I found on Oh My Handmade, designed by Pixie Chicago.