Tutorial: Adding an Elastic To My Notebook

As promised in a previous post, I am here today to give you a tutorial on how I hacked my Miquel Rius notebook and added an elastic closure and a ribbon bookmark! It was so easy and took maybe 10 minutes! If you have one of these notebooks and would like to do the same, keep reading!

On to the tutorial…

First, of course, you will need supplies! I had this elastic at home already along with everything else, so no money was spent for this little project! SCORE! Not pictured here is the blade you will need to cut the hole for the elastic. I used a small box cutter. Now I loosely call this a “tutorial” because I won’t be providing you with exact measurements for anything! Sorry! I pretty much eyeballed it! Except the placement of the elastic. As you can see I did measure to make sure the holes lined up and they were both the same spacing from the bottom and side of the notebook. Then using the elastic, I marked a slit wide enough and used the box cutter to cut it open.

Now that you have your holes cut, insert your elastic. On the top you want to insert it going down. Then inside I used the hot glue gun to glue it in place.

After you have one end secure, wrap the elastic around the notebook and get a secure but not too tight fit around the book. I used a notebook that already has an elastic closure to kind of get a feel for how tight it should be. (Again, I didn’t measure, sorry!) Then insert the elastic upwards into the bottom slit on the back cover. Then hold that in place and take the elastic from around the notebook. Open the cover and hot glue the bottom of the elastic into place. Make sure it is pointing up towards the top of the cover.

When you’re done it should look like this! Sort of like a circle coming out of the notebook. Now pat yourself on the back!

And here it is all finished and wrapped around! The cover will still be a little flimsy so be careful when pulling it closed. I have just used washi tape to secure a project life card to the front of my notebook but it keeps pulling away. I thought about gluing it but what if I want to change the card?! (Commitment issues? Maybe!)