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Friday, September 19, 2014

DIY School Supplies #8: DIY Cork Board

The Finished Product...
Okay so I am really sorry for my absence but school started and I have been super busy so I just haven't had time however I am going to try to get back into the swing of things so yes I should be posting more regularly.

Okay so basically this is a really simple cork board diy and honestly I love this. I don't remember where I found it but it's probably somewhere on YouTube.

What you'll need:
A cork board
Paint
Paint Brushes
Painting Tape

So basically you are going to want to take a plain cork board, cheap one or new one doesn't matter...
 (excuse my foot please)
And tape it off. If you don't want to paint the wood you are going to want to tape off the edges of the frame first. I tried to just take the cork out but mine wouldn't some out. Maybe yours does so that's an option. You are going to want to do this before you put down the stripes due to you will take the stripes off and continue painting so when you take the strip tape off you don't want to take off the edge tape too. If that makes any sense. I basically just made some diagonal stripes leaving the part I wanted to paint not taped.

 After I painted I removed the tape and replaced it where I wanted the new stripes do be.
Wait until this is fully dried until you do it otherwise the tape may take up some of the newly painted paint.

 And did the same thing again...
 And again but I didn't show because I think you guys got the idea. However this is a picture of me painting so I can share some painting on cork board tips.
 First of all as this picture is trying to demonstrate the best way to get color is by dabbing motions. However you are still going to want to do several coats and I would recommend the top one being brush strokes because it gives a more even coating.
And the way I liked to get the paint onto the cork board (also shown in the picture) is by actual squirting it right onto the board.
And that is pretty much it. Overall you are going to need a lot of paint.
And i think spray paint would be a lot faster and easier you would just have to care to cover up the whole frame and everyplace you don't want covered.
 And this is the final product hanging on my wall...
I hope you guys enjoyed and I'm really sorry for not posting for so long not that I know anybody reads my blog regularly.

Friday, August 29, 2014

DIY School Supplies #7: DIY Planner/Binder Cover

The Finished Project...

You can really use this with anything but I used it with my agenda which conveniently comes with slot on the front cover to stick papers in like a binder does.
The first thing you are going to want to do is cut your paper to the size of your binder or notebook however you could do this on a notebook or the normal cover of an agenda (without paper if you wanted).
And then you can do whatever you want to decorate the cover of the notebook. You find find how I made this here. I jusrt mixed some dark blue with dark purple and light purple.
And then using these colors I spray painted which you can also find the steps too in the above link.


And on the bottom quite discretely I wrote a quote which says "Life is too important a thing to ever talk seriously about."
And because my agenda has the pocket I just slipped some cute tumblr photos on the front however you could also glue these done or add some pictures of your families or friends.
However you want to customize it.

Monday, August 25, 2014

DIY School Supplies #6: Washi Tape Pencils

The Finished Project...

This is really simple and if you've researched diy school supplies you have probably found this idea.
 I did it two ways.

The first is just you take long pieces of washi tape and put them on the pencil vertically. You have do two strips for this to get all the ways along the pencil. 
The plain pen
Halfway done with one piece on...
The finished pen

I did this with pencils and pens.
The other way is where you wrap the washi tape around the pencil horizontly. You could do this with one print but I did it with multiple. You can see this with the pencil on the far left.


Honestly washi tape is a good way to make anything plain, personalized. No one will have the same thing as you and it probably won't get stolen and if it does you will know because it will be decorated like you decorated it.

I hope you liked this and as always make it you own.

Friday, August 22, 2014

DIY School Supplies #5: Newspaper Chevron Notebook/Binder Cover

The Finished Product...

The Inspiration...
Just Chevron and Newspaper, I love.

What you'll need:
A notebook
Newspaper Scissors
And not pictured..
Mod Podge 
Paint Brush
Scrap paper
Sharpie (optional)
 If you want you could paint the notebook but I just wanted to keep it simple.
The first thing you are going to want to do is take some scrap paper and figure out your chevron stripe. It took me some time before I found the one I wanted to use.
 Test it out on your notebook to make sure you like how it looks. I wanted to make sure it covered the words on the cover.
 And use that stencil to cut out your chevron newspaper stripes.
 And lay them out on your notebook how you want them. I used one for the top and bottom and just cut it in half.
 You are then going to want to glue them down and cut off the excess from the edges.

And then you can cut slits where the holes for the rings are, not the actual rings. I mentioned this in my last post but this is a better picture.
 You are then going to want to mod podge over everything.

And this is optional as of everything but I just took a Sharpie and wrote some quotes along the edges.
 And you are done.
I think this would also look really cool with a black notebook and some colorful scrapbook paper. This is totally personalized and I just love the simplicity of it. You can find my other school diys here.

Monday, August 18, 2014

DIY School Supplies #4: Tumblr Inspired Notebook/Binder Cover

The Final Product...

I'm sure you guys have all seen the notebooks that I based this off of with the triangles and the pretty picture. This is just how I did mine and well if you have no idea what I'm talking about then you will now.

As I said in my last DIY School Supplies video I am using the Mead hash tag notebooks. This one is in yellow...
 (you could also put this on a piece of paper and put it in a binder).
And I'm just going to measure my notebook so I could figure out the dimensions of my triangles.
 And cut out some stencil triangles so I could figure how it would look and just stencils...
 If you're curiousI used two different size triangles so that none of the triangles would be cut off. All my triangles were two inches wide though. The bigger ones (for the top and the bottom) were three inches tall and the smaller ones were two and one fourth inches tall. Just in case you wanted to know.

And if you are familiar with this diy then you might know that normally people use magazines but my house lacks good magazines so I printed off a bunch of pictures from tumblr instead...
 And of course I had to cut them out. You also just use magazines and these two steps of printing them and cutting them out would be totally unnecessary.
 And basically I also sorted my pictures by which size triangle I was going to cut them to be and if the tip would be at the bottom or top. Even if you are using magazines I would encourage you to think about this so that not all of you triangles have tips at the top or at the bottom.
 Then I just drew the triangle on the back (highly recommended because then you can't see the lines once you cut and glue it)...
 ...and cut them out once again putting them into their piles based on size and direction.
 Then I layed out my triangles deciding where I wanted to put which triangles and deciding which ones I wanted to be cut to be the half triangles on the sides. (Hint: If you cut one triangle it can be used two times for either side)
 Then I glued on my triangle down. I like to do normal glue to put the triangles to the notebook and then mod podge on top to seal any corners.

 And for the spiral rings. You can either not put anything on the strip near the rings or take a scissor and make cuts where all the holes are allowing you to put the little flaps in between the spiral. Make sure you make the slits where the holes are and not the spiral rings otherwise the slits will end up not going around the rings and yes. If that makes any sense at all...
And you are done. I hope you guys enjoyed this back to school tutorial. Make sure to make it your own!

Friday, August 15, 2014

DIY School Supplies Master Plan

This is basically going to be a large list of everything I have diyed for school this year with links to the posts in which I talk about the process of diying them.

This Binder Cover (which you could use on a notebook) found here.

This corresponding notebook (or binder) found here.

 And this binder cover (or notebook) found here.

And this corresponding notebook (or binder cover) found here.

And this random but really simple notebook (or binder cover) here.

And some really cute washi tape pencils for mechanical or regular wooden pencils found here.

And then there's this agenda cover/binder cover/notebook which you can find here.