Julie Howlin, Writer: What to do with used notebooks

If you’re a writer, you almost certainly have shelves of notebooks, full of first drafts of novels or short stories which have long since been transcribed onto the computer, and turned into printed books or e-books.

Perhaps you like to keep the first drafts as they are for posterity, but perhaps you simply don’t want to throw them away, and so they just sit there gathering dust. Perhaps the notebooks are too nice to throw in the recycling, because they were gifts from friends or family, or the lovely blank books you bought to encourage yourself to write.

What’s the solution?

For me, it’s turning them into art journals, or altered books. When I first heard about the art of altering old books, it appealed to me, but butchering books didn’t. Then it occurred to me that I could use the notebooks full of first drafts and give them a new purpose in life.

I’m not writing a “how to” manual here. I’m just going to show you some of the things you can do with an old notebook if you happen to be a bit crafty as well as a wordsmith. If you’re inspired and want instructions and/or ideas, search Pinterest or Instagram for “art journals” or “altered books” and you’ll find plenty.

I’m writing this during lockdown and have to admit at times wondering if mooching around shops like Hobbycraft just to see what you can find will ever be possible again, but there’s still Amazon and other online stores and there are all kinds of things you might be able to find at home, especially if you’re a bit of a hoarder, that will finally find that purpose in life you always knew it had.

Here are a few of the things I have used:

Advertising leaflets
Bleach (can be dripped on old, out of focus photos to make interesting effects)
Carbon paper
Christmas crackers/party hats
Clip art
Clothing labels
Confetti
Craft scissors/crimping shears
Decorative paper napkins
Ephemera, both found and purchased
Last year’s calendar
Old greeting cards
Old magazines/newspapers
Old maps
Old photographs
Origami paper
Pens and pencils
Pressed flowers
Quality Street wrappers and other packaging
Remnants of paint samples
Ribbons
Rubber stamps
Rubbings of coins and other textures
Scrapbooking supplies such as background paper
Shaped hole punches
Sponges or scrunched up paper for dabbing paint on backgrounds
Stencils
Stickers
The sticky paper left behind after the stickers have been used
The plastic mesh bags fruit and veg sometimes come in
Tippex
Transfers
Washi tape
Watercolour paints
Wax candles (Scribble on a page with the wax and paint over it with watercolour)
Wrapping paper.

A few of my favourites:

Patterned pages from an old magazine torn up and roughly glued. A rubber stamp of Chinese characters. Cutouts from magazines.

Rubber stamps, old photo ephemera from Amazon. A bit which fell off an old Christmas decoration, magazine cutouts, decorative craft tape, found ephemera.

A picture from a magazine and craft tape.

Magazine cutouts, a pressed orchid, washi tape.

Birthday card, nature ephemera from Amazon, craft tape, confetti, watercolour paint.

Old craft paint, paint sample, magazine cutouts, rubber stamps.

Magazine cutouts, stickers, watercolour paint.

Watercolour paint, felt tip pens, metallic markers and white markers

Magazine cutout of a window with the glass cut out and I’ve doodled on my writing underneath to make it look like fantasy script. Then used a red marker to draw the bricks around the edge.

My drawing, coloured with felt tip pen and the background drawn with a gel pen. Both this example and the previous one made use of a technique called Zentangle. If you like to doodle and draw, Google it. But make sure you have lots of time and drawing pens!

My latest masterpiece is a small notebook turned into a 3D work of art. Starting at the back and using a drawing compass, I drew circles which gradually increased in size until I couldn’t expand them outwards any more, at which point I started making them ovals. I took pictures from magazines and brochures, wrapping paper and scrapbook supplies and cut out circles to fit onto the various pages (keeping the cutouts for use in future projects). Placing more cutouts so they stuck out into the space. I made a border out of washi tape for each page, originally to reinforce the edges but found I rather liked the final effect:

Finally I added quotes, sayings or jokes so that each page also had some words on it. Here’s the first page. And again with the pages spread to emphasise the 3D effect.

It may well be a bit too busy and cluttered for some people’s tastes. Personally I liked the fact that as you turn the pages, more things become visible: