Tutorial for a Last-Minute Gift

Updated Sep. 13, 2019. Originally published Dec. 14, 2013.

Why a Last-Minute Gift?

Sometimes you need a gift at the last minute. You forgot you needed a gift for someone, some new gift-giving occasion came up, another gift plan fell through, etc. There are plenty of “generic” options – grab a DVD, a gift card…give cash. But maybe you want something a little more personal. (I’m assuming we’re not talking next-twenty-minutes kind of “last minute.” In that case, go with the gift card or cash!)

But you don’t have time at this point to spend hours crafting something. And you certainly don’t have time to order something and wait for it to ship. So you need a project that will let you personalize something you can find in a local store, in a relatively short period of time.

That’s what I love about this project. It takes a little bit of hands-on time, but not much. It doesn’t require any mad skills. And it can all be made with items from the office-supply store and other local shops. The trick? Make a set! If you “pretty up” some office supplies – but you pretty up several to match, it becomes a set and looks quite classy. And most of these elements just take a little bit of cutting and gluing.

A Few Notes Before We Start

You can adapt this however you need to. Make more “copies” of a certain item. Don’t make everything shown in this post (just pick a few things). Create these in bulk. Whatever.

You don’t have to use the same brands I used, either. I love this Sustainable Earth brand from Staples. The paper is sugarcane-based, so it’s more renewable than regular paper, and pens glide across it beautifully! Plus I like the basic kraft paper-colored look. (The composition book is, for some reason, no longer available in-store, though. 🙁 )

But that’s pretty irrelevant for a project like this one. A regular composition book would work just fine, because we’ll be covering it up. If you’re not doing this last-minute, you could stock up on these during the back-to-school sales.

You’ll need some basic supplies. These are the items I used as the “core” of my gift. That is, these are the things I decorated:

Except for the binder clips. I tried, but they didn’t work like I had hoped. (They came in handy for temporary use, though.) You’ll also need a few “tools” – scissors, glue (glue stick is best), a ruler, a pencil, cardstock, a needle. And a pushpin. At least, that’s what I used, but you’ll see what it’s for when we get there, and you might have an alternative option.

You’ll also need paper with which to decorate these items. Wrapping paper would work well, I think, because it’s flexible and comes in a variety of prints. Scrapbook paper is a good option, too – because it, too, comes in a variety of prints. (You probably don’t want anything thicker than that.) I chose this swirly green because I thought it coordinated well with the “natural” colors of the notebooks/notepads. (I made everything you’ll see in this tutorial with just 2 sheets of 12-inch-square paper, and had a little left over, so you don’t need a lot!)

Let’s consider this as separate tutorials for each item, just for ease of finding everything.

Tutorial 1 – The Composition Book

Let’s start with covering the composition book. It’s the biggest item, so it will require the largest “chunks” of our decorative paper. (Also, the composition book makes a great “core” for the gift.) Put the book on top of your decorative paper (with the wrong side of the paper up) and trace around it.

You can start it right at the edge of where the spine wrap ends.

Do this for the front and the back.

Then cut the pieces out. Here you can see my book and the two cover pieces.

Now glue these decorative pieces on. Do not use regular white glue; it’s too wet and it will buckle. Spray glue is good, but glue stick works just fine and it’s easy to find. Make sure you coat the whole thing well, especially out to the very edges. I like to apply the glue like this:

First run the glue stick all around the edges. Then “color” in the center as though you were coloring with crayon. Adhere this to the cover, smoothing it down well. Be especially sure it sticks well around the edges. (If you’re a perfectionist, you could turn it over once it’s dry and run an X-Acto knife around the edge to be sure it’s perfectly even. This is totally optional, though.)

Tutorial 2 – The Notepad

Then cover the notepad. This is so simple I didn’t even take a picture.

You don’t need to cover the whole notepad – just the cardboard part at the top where it’s all stapled/glued together. Cut a strip of decorative paper the correct size to wrap around this portion, then coat it with glue as shown above and stick it on. That’s it!

Tutorial 3 – The Pen(s)

The trickiest part of this project is selecting the right pens to start with. I would have liked to use some kind of recycled pen, but I couldn’t find one that had a clear barrel. You want the barrel of the pen to be clear so the decorative paper will show. And you need to be able to take the pen apart. A Bic Crystal pen will work. (You can’t take the bottom end apart; you have to pull it out from the nib.) But I like these. In my opinion, they look classier for this particular purpose, and the smooth clear barrel allows the decorative paper to show quite nicely.

First cut a piece of decorative paper the length of the hollow portion of the barrel. Like this:

The width…well, I just eyeball it. (The piece in the picture above has not yet been trimmed for width.) You just need to be able to roll it, so it doesn’t have to be huge.

I’ve found it helpful to first curve the paper by half-rolling it in my fingers like this:

(Thanks to my daughter for serving as a hand model so I could show you.)

Then roll it up. (The decorative side should be facing out.)

(If you have trouble getting it to roll, you can try rolling it around the pen insert after you’ve disassembled the pen.)

Open up the pen. This one unscrews from the bottom end.

Insert your rolled-up tube of paper.

And reassemble the pen. Now it looks like this:

So far this is what we have:

If you’re in a bigger hurry or on a more limited budget, you could stop here, and this would still make a nice set. (For that matter, just the composition book and a pen could be a nice gift. Tie them together with a pretty ribbon and you have a pretty gift for a journaler.)

If you’d like to expand your set, keep reading for some options.

Tutorial 4 – Cereal-Box Notebooks

We’re going to make a miniature notebook from 2 sheets of printer paper and an empty cereal box. (Yay for upcycling!) Cut the printer paper into fourths. I don’t think you really need me to tell you how to do that, but in case you need help – I folded mine in half one way, then unfolded and folded in half the other way to get “lines” to cut along.

Then open up the cereal box along the seams and trace around the paper. (This is going to be the notebook’s cover. I made mine just a smidgen bigger around than the paper.)

In the photo above you can see my pencil lines where I traced. (I used the folds of the box as my other two lines.)

Cut it out. You should now have this:

Fold these parts in half. You’ll probably want to fold the paper in half all together as a stack.

Now we need to turn it into a book. Mark a spot an even distance from either end, a little way in. There’s not really a particular distance this needs to be. Maybe 3/4 of an inch to 1-1/2 inches, or something like that. I just used the width of my binder clips so I didn’t have to go grab a measuring tool.

Then punch a small hole through all of the layers at these two spots. A pushpin works well for this.

Make sure the pages are centered on the cover, and punch through the cover, too.

You should end up with something that looks like this:

Thread a large needle with a length of dental floss.

“Stitch” it in through one hole…

…out through the other.

You should have two ends of the floss at the outside of the book. Remove the needle and pull everything taut. Then tie the ends of the floss together tightly. You can trim the loose ends if you want.

We still have these ugly inner covers, which we’re going to take care of by gluing the last page from each end of the book (the “endpapers”) to the insides of the cover. One at a time, coat them with glue like we did for the composition book cover.

And adhere to the inside of the cover.

When you’ve done that with both ends, cut a strip of the decorative paper and glue it over the spine of the notebook. (It will cover up the stitching.)

Tutorial 5 – Sticky Note Cover with Pen Holder

Finally, we’re going to create a neat little cover for a standard (3″) sticky note pad, with a built-in pen slot. (I’ve adapted this from another tutorial online – linked below – which was metric.)

Cut a piece of cardstock 3.5″x8.5″. For general purposes, this would be good enough. For this project (because we want our set to match), just use white cardstock, but cut a piece of your decorative paper the same size and glue it to the cardstock. Remember to adhere the edges well!

Turn the paper so the wrong side faces up and it’s in front of you in “landscape” format. Mark it with a pencil at 3.5, 4, and 4.5 inches from the left edge.

Score along the lines. (If you don’t have a scoring tool, you can use the back of a butter knife. That’s what I did because I was too lazy to go get out my bone folder. Just put a ruler against the line and then draw your butter knife along the ruler’s edge.)

Fold on the center line.

Cut on this fold in two places. The exact placement doesn’t matter, but you want the cuts about an inch apart, and not too close to the edges. The cuts should end at the other fold lines.

When you’ve made your cuts, it should look something like this:

(You can’t really see the second cut in that picture, but it’s there, and it matches the one you can see.)

Fold the whole contraption like so:

Then put glue on the surfaces indicated in this picture, and glue it down:

(Do not glue the center section that’s folded back the other direction.)

It should be folded like you see in the image above. (See, I made use of the binder clips! They’re holding it shut while the glue dries.) When it’s dry, open the cover up, remove the backing from your sticky note pad, center it and adhere it to the cover.

And you’ll have this:

Here’s what the full set looks like:

(In case you were wondering about the binder clips…I tried to cover them with this same paper, using spray adhesive. That’s the same method used in the tutorial you’ll see listed below. But it didn’t work; the paper just popped back off.)

Credits:
I used the following tutorials as inspiration and/or starting points:

Other Ideas:

These other tutorials, Pinned to my Pinterest boards, could be used to create additions to and/or variations on the “package” above: