I’m not sure about you, but I’m ALWAYS on the hunt for cute, colorful notebooks. They’re one of those things that I have an obsession with… and when I see a new one, I get it. If we’re being honest, can you REALLY have too many notebooks?!

This “tutorial” is more for inspiration- so you can see just how easy it is to turn something that was once plain into something more your style… so, let’s get INSPIRED!

What you’ll need:

Any plain notebook
watercolor paint
paint brushes
lettering stencil
one sheet of watercolor paper
washi tape
mod podge

mod podging the watercolor paper onto the notebook

placing the watercolor paper onto the notebook

The very first thing to do is to rip a piece of watercolor paper to fit the cover of your journal! Ripping it gives it the jagged edges- which is the look I was going for!

Once you have it the right size, you can use a foam brush (or any brush) to mod podge it on!

The next step involves these stencils! You can find lots of different stencils at any craft store- but this specific one came from Michaels!

stenciling the paint onto the watercolor paper

All I did was cut out the letters I wanted to use- in this case, I was spelling out “you are enough”.

I decided to use watercolor paints, but feel free to use acrylic paint, markers… anything!

After you stencil out your letters, it’s time for you to get creative!!! I wanted to add a few little embellishments here and there… what you see here is a strip of fabric I ripped to size, and just mod podged on!

Up in the corner, I just added a few little strips of washi tape! You can also see where I just splattered some paint around the paper, and outlined my letters with my posca paint pens.