The best DIY journals start with a ninety nine cent composition book and about an hour, which is roughly a thirtieth of what the pretty agenda in the shop window costs. One thing I will tell you before you start, because it is the mistake that ruins more covers than any other: do not buy bargain paint or bargain markers for this. Cheap paint has less pigment and more filler, so you end up putting on three coats and it still looks streaky. Posca and Liquitex acrylic markers are what I reach for, and if it has to be craft paint, DecoArt Americana or FolkArt. From there, take your pick. There are washi tape covers, watercolor printables, iris folding out of a paper grocery bag, gelato ombre, fabric, leather, birch plywood, a medieval one sewn and tied with floss, and several bound by hand from nothing but printer paper.
1. Simple Sharpie Journals
Plain journals, a metallic Sharpie, and a trick that removes all the pressure. Instead of drawing freehand on a cover you cannot undo, trace your design first with white chalk transfer paper, which lives in the same aisle as the other transfer papers. Draw over the chalk lines in metallic Sharpie, then wipe the white away with a damp paper towel when you are done. The transfer paper also gives you ruled guide lines to letter a quote along. The journals themselves came from a craft store for under three dollars each with a coupon.
Get the full tutorial at Lil Blue Boo.
2. DIY Summer Journal
A composition book wrapped in a road map, with a printable label on the front, and a reason behind it that makes it worth doing. It is a summer journal for kids: a set time every day to write about what happened, with ticket stubs and scraps glued in beside the entries, so by September there is a record of the whole break and the writing habit survived it. The map cover makes it look like a proper travel journal rather than schoolwork, which is most of the battle. Works just as well for a family holiday.
Get the full tutorial at The Polka Dot Chair.
3. Homemade Journals
This is the one to make when you want a stack rather than a single journal, because the whole batch pictured took about an hour. Seven sheets of ordinary 8.5 by 11 printer paper get trimmed in half to 8.5 by 5.5, which folds down to twenty eight pages. A Crop-A-Dile punches the holes, twine binds the spine, and the cover can be paper, leather, faux leather or oil cloth, whatever you have. Letter stamps and permanent ink finish the front. Cheap enough to hand out and nice enough that people keep them.
Get the full tutorial at A Beautiful Mess.
4. DIY Pocket Travel Journal
Small enough to live in a bag, which is the only reason travel journals ever actually get filled in. It starts with an inexpensive notepad from the dollar store, used purely as the cover: the inside pages get lifted out with a ruler and a craft knife, and your own pages go in instead. Chipboard letters name the trip on the front, a hair elastic keeps it shut, and graph paper, map paper and washi tape build the inside. Write the short notes while you are away, and add the photos when you get home.
Get the full tutorial at Simple As That.
5. DIY Prayer Journal
A composition book, washi tape and photos, made for a three year old who kept wanting to draw in her mother’s journaling Bible. That is the whole origin story and it is a better argument for this project than any craft reason. Wide washi strips cover the front in bands, a photo gets framed in the middle, and PRAY goes on in black letters. Because the base is a comp book, a child can absolutely wreck it and nobody minds, which is precisely the point. Make a second one at the same time and keep it blank for a gift.
Get the full tutorial at Illustrated Faith.
6. Make an Art Journal
An o-wire bound art journal with a cover painted rather than papered, and the tree on the front is the giveaway that it is meant to be made, not matched. The series behind it builds the whole thing in stages, leaves cut from old book pages, a collaged tree for the front, a second design for the back, then the binding, so you can stop after any one of them and still have something. Paint the cover before binding, not after. It is far easier to work flat than around a wire spine.
Get the full tutorial at Jennie Moraitis.
7. DIY Ombre Journals
The ombre is made, not bought. Gelatos, the chunky pigment sticks, get blended across 11 by 17 natural white cardstock until the colour fades from deep to pale, and that hand-made sheet becomes the cover paper over bookboard. The cardstock matters here: it is thick and lightly textured, which is what lets the pigment blend instead of streaking. This sits at the end of a bookbinding series, so if you have never built a text block or a hard cover before, start with those posts and come back for the pretty part.
Get the full tutorial at Damask Love.
8. Fabric Covered Journal
A sewn fabric cover that slips over a journal rather than being glued to it, which means it comes off, washes, and moves to the next book when this one is full. Front and back flaps take the covers, a strip closes across the front and a button and loop hold it shut. It is a beginner sewing project with straight seams only, and it was originally made in quantity for a church bookstore, which tells you the pattern holds up to being repeated. Measure the book closed rather than open, and add for the spine.
Get the full tutorial at Simply Homemade.
9. DIY Journal From Breakfast Box
The cover of this one starts life as a breakfast biscuit box, which is a better base than it sounds because the box already gives you a folded spine to build on. Cover the printed card in decorative paper, add your pages, and it reads as a handmade notebook rather than recycling. It is the right project to sit down and do with a child, and the right one for the person who wants to start journaling without buying anything first. There is a step by step video on the post if the folding is easier watched than read.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
10. Rainbow Journal Cover
This is not painted stripes, it is iris folding, and it is far more satisfying than it looks. A paper grocery bag gets cut open flat and folded around the book exactly the way a school book cover works, then strips of bright cardstock are laid in a spiral inside a cut shape, each one overlapping the last, until the opening fills with a rainbow whirl. There is a free pattern to work from. It is precise rather than difficult, and a square and a heart are both shown.
Get the full tutorial at Suzy's Artsy Craftsy Sitcom.
11. Homemade DIY Journal Out of Wood
Plywood covers, and the cost per journal is what sells it. A quarter inch birch plywood sheet runs about twelve dollars and yields eight or more covers, cut out on a jigsaw and sanded with 220 grit. Drill the binding holes with a 5/16 bit, punch your pages with a three prong punch, and hold the whole thing together with metal book rings so it opens flat. A wood burner and transfer paper put a design on the front, then hemp oil or polyurethane seals it. About thirty minutes each once you are set up.
Get the full tutorial at Thrift Diving.
12. Free Printable Watercolor Notebook Covers For Journals
Under a dollar a notebook, and there is no painting involved. Three watercolor printables come free with the post; print one, trim it to the front of a composition book, and here is the trick that makes it fit properly: turn the cover over and trace the rounded corner so your paper matches the curve instead of sticking out square. A thin layer of decoupage glue goes on the cover, corners included, then smooth the print down. Weight it under a heavy book for a few hours or the cover will curl on you.
Get the full tutorial at Eighteen25.
13. Easy DIY Photo Journal
Built for square photos, which is the detail that makes it work. A strip of 6 by 11 inch cardstock gets scored at one inch intervals and folded into an accordion, double sided adhesive goes onto the folds, and printed photos mount into the resulting pockets. The whole thing was made to rescue a trip’s worth of pictures that had lived on a phone for four years without ever being printed. If yours are sitting there too, this is a two hour project that gets them into your hands.
Get the full tutorial at Damask Love.
14. Turn An Ordinary Notebook Into A Beautiful Journal
A black speckled composition book, a stack of scrapbook paper and decoupage medium, and that is the whole materials list. Cut the paper into squares and glue them across the cover so the finish reads as a quilt rather than a wrap, then decoupage over the top to seal it. Gold craft paint down the spine tidies the edge where the squares stop, and die-cut paper butterflies go on last, set in the medium so they sit proud. A good group project: it was made as an ice-breaker for a mothers’ group.
Get the full tutorial at Crafty Texas Girls.
15. Easy Handmade Art Journal
Three ways to bind a journal fast, and the first one is the reason to read it. Run a stack of folded paper straight through a sewing machine along the fold and it is bound, no awl, no waxed thread, no hours. The honest caveat comes with it: a very thick stack will beat the machine, so keep the sections small and make several. The covers here are offcuts of hand painted paper, which is the other good idea, because every art journal you make generates the paper for the next one.
Get the full tutorial at Alisa Burke.
16. DIY Junk Journal
A junk journal is where the saved things go: ephemera, ticket stubs, book pages, maps, lace, buttons and fabric scraps, bound into a fat book that is half album and half art project. The useful claim on this one is that the entire thing can be assembled with a single strong adhesive and no sewing machine at all, which removes the barrier most people hit. Gather from a trip, from your own stash or from a thrift run. The version pictured is Christmas themed, but the method has nothing to do with the season.
Get the full tutorial at Smart Fun DIY.
17. Medieval Journal Cover
The most fun project on this list to do with children, and it teaches something. Four sheets of printer paper get folded and sewn up the fold on a sewing machine, four times over, making four signatures that stack into a properly fat book. Brown kraft paper or a cut-up grocery sack becomes the cover, crumpled and coloured with a brown crayon so it passes for vellum. Punch the binding holes through everything with a nail and a hammer on a board outside, then sew the covers on with brown embroidery floss and tie it shut.
Get the full tutorial at Layers of Learning.
18. 5-Minute Mini Notebook DIY
Paper crafts and painting are my core passion, which means I have a drawer of scrapbook paper scraps too pretty to throw out and no idea what to do with them. This is what they are for. It is a pocket-sized notebook you can fold and finish in about five minutes from leftover patterned paper and cardstock, small enough to live in a pencil case or a handbag, and still perfectly usable for lists, reminders and doodles. Mix your papers and you end up with a whole set, no two the same. Full step by step plus the video is on the post.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
19. How To Make A No-Sew Journal
No needle, no thread, and no bookbinding vocabulary required. Ordinary exercise or composition books get glued face to face with PVA glue and stacked into one chunky vintage-looking journal, then tape runs close to the spine of each pair to hold them together so nothing falls apart later. One tip that saves the whole thing: if your books have a glossy cover, sand the surfaces first or the glue will never grip. Decorate afterwards with paint, patterned paper, kraft paper and decorative tape.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
20. Easy DIY Scrapbook Journals
Chicago screws are the answer here, and they are why this one needs no sewing at all. Two pieces of bookboard cut to 1 by 5.5 inches and two to 5.5 by 8.5 build a hinged cover, fabric wraps them, and twenty sheets of patterned paper cut to 9.75 by 5.5 make the block. A hole punch tool and the screws bind the lot, which also means you can open it later and add pages. Wide, very sticky double sided tape does the fabric, because glue will bubble through it.
Get the full tutorial at Damask Love.
21. Button And String Journal
Made as a Valentine’s gift, which tells you what it is for: somewhere to write the things you would put in a letter if a letter were long enough. The closure is the project. Two small eyelets take two round paper die cuts and a button each, and eleven inches of baker’s twine wraps between them to hold it shut. Cover paper cuts to 11 by 6 inches, inside pages to 4.25 by 8, and seven sheets is plenty. Found papers are the nicest part: old writing pages, graph paper, cut up magazine pages.
Get the full tutorial at The Creative Place.
22. Beautiful Leather Journal
Real leather, and the sourcing tip is the best thing on the page: call a local shoe repair shop and ask if they will sell you their scraps, which is where the black and white leather here came from. Faux leather from a fabric store works too, though the real thing looks and feels better. What it needs from your machine is a leather needle in size 16 to 18, heavy duty thread, and a walking foot, which stops the layers shifting. Use hair clips or paper clips instead of pins, because pin holes in leather never close up.
Get the full tutorial at Tidbits.
23. Smash Journal Bucket List
A smash journal is a bucket list you can add to sideways. This one started as a two dollar mini ring binder with an awkward six ring configuration that no ordinary hole punch fits, which turned out to be the making of it: instead of buying inserts, every page got made by hand. The pages deliberately do not match, so new ones can go in at any point without the whole thing needing to coordinate. Cherry blossom season in Japan, stargazing in the outback, and touching snow for the first time are on the list inside.
Get the full tutorial at Paper and Pins.
24. Turn A Comp Book Into A Gratitude Journal
Composition books at five cents each, bought on a 70 percent back-to-school clearance, which is the entire economics of this project and the reason to bookmark it for late August. A free printable cover label goes on the front, 12 by 12 scrapbook paper covers the rest, and a strip of ric rac, a paper flower and a button finish it. It was made for a group of young women after a lesson about being grateful, and that is the real use: a batch of these costs almost nothing and gives everyone the same starting point.
Get the full tutorial at All Things Target.
25. Wonderful Handmade Journal Cover
A quilter’s take, which means the construction is better than most fabric covers you will find. It slips over a standard spiral notebook, it comes from a quilting magazine’s own pattern library, and the fabric is a proper coordinated collection rather than whatever was in the scrap bin. The pieced pocket panel on the front is the detail worth copying even if you change everything else. Straightforward enough for a confident beginner, and because it is a slip cover, it outlives the notebook inside it by years.
Get the full tutorial at All People Quilt.
26. Simple Stamped Journal
Three ideas in one post, and the chalkboard one is the keeper. An inexpensive sketchbook gets foam-stamped in white ink for the stamped version. For the chalkboard version, start with a composition book, check the cover is the sturdy kind because they are not all equal, paint it with chalkboard paint and let it cure a full twenty four hours. Then write on it with Chalk Ink markers rather than chalk. A wet wipe removes the writing, and a magic eraser takes off any ghost image left behind.
Get the full tutorial at Lil Blue Boo.
27. DIY Sketchbook Journal
Made as a summer bullet journal, which is to say a to-do list, a planner and a sketchbook in one book, and the paper choice reflects that: heavy enough to take a bit of paint or ink. The clever part is the splash proof cover, laminated because the maker works at the beach. No laminator is not a problem, and the post says so: clear contact paper, packing tape or a cereal box all do the job. There is a video, plus a bonus on making planner clips and charms out of shrink plastic.
Get the full tutorial at The Frugal Crafter.
