Half-used exercise books are standard fixtures at the end of the school term. It gets kind of messy with a few pages from the spelling test book, to an almost unused stack from the penmanship class. Instead of keeping these used exercise books as it is, I consolidated the unused sheets into 2 DIY bound journals, so that I can write on the the remaining unused pages.

After some tearing, sorting and hole-punching, I turned to my elementary book binding skills and created 2 journal books with the loose sheets.

This project can be easily completed in under 2 hours. Nothing fanciful here, these recycled exercise books are after all just recycled paper being bound. I did not use any glitzy craft paper or tapes. I just grabbed whatever that I could find inside my drawer. However, I still attempted a simple decoration trick with a 3.5″ diskette label, to make it look slightly “old-school”.

Things I used for this project:
– Scissors
– Hole puncher
– Linen thread & needle
– Cover paper
– Masking tape (Optional, for the book spine, if you do not want the stitches to show)

For more on DIY book binding, see here, and here.