New things!

As we're going to have to do a major clear out when mum moves in with us sort of Julyish, and many of the things which will have to go are books, magazines and other printed stuff including my massive collection of children's Christmas comic annuals, Snoopy and Mad books I've decided to try to reuse as much as possible.

I'm not known for my green credentials I'm afraid, but my new project might get me a few green points. I'm going to use the books etc to cover and make notebooks and journals. Mainly covering, so I won't exactly be using much recycled material, but it's a start!
I bought a few cheap A6 hardback notebooks and covered my first one today with a page from a street atlas of Manchester which I thought was appropriate. It took rather a long time, but I thing it's worked well! I bought some clear glaze to protect the paper and I'm doing a test on another book making project from a few months ago. It's smelly and drying at the moment.

I used regular white craft glue which for a non-making person like myself is a nice non-threatening material! The paper in the notebooks is rather thin and the glue rather wet, which isn't the best combination in the world, so the first and last pages of the books seem a bit wrinkly to me. I'm not quite sure how to stop the thin pages from going like this. Also the most tricky part of the process was working out how to get the paper wrapped over the top of the spine and sort of wrapped back inside the spin. It's not worked terribly well, certainly not well enough to sell. Yet. I'll end up with mountains of slightly crappy little notebooks all over the place while I try to find a solution!