Made: Vintage Contact Paper Covered Notebooks

Like many of my sort, I am a compulsive list maker and notebook accumulator. I have found I work best having separate notebooks for daily/general work, personal journaling/tasks, and  for particular clients or big projects.

I have bought lots of pretty books, but my allegiance seems to come back again and again to the basic marbled composition book (bought by the dozens each fall for school supply lists). i favor graph-paper and college-ruled versions, but also enjoy the Primary Books with blank drawing space above the lines.

In the past, I have periodically covered these with wallpaper or shelf paper to help distinguish them from the kids' books, and to make them prettier.  So when I recently stumbled upon a roll of vintage ConTack paper at Frock Shop Revival, I got busy cutting and peeling and sticking.

My friend, Laurie Smithwick, has been leading a campaign to encourage us to "Step Away From The Screen and Make Something".  I share this not-work-but-worth-making post, in part, because of her prompts. As she shared in her recent Alt talk, creative people need to MAKE stuff -- in real life, with their hands -- to keep fueling the creativity.  For the many of us that do our creating on screen all day, this comes a surprising shoulder-shaking. So, here's to MAKING, even if we're just making prettier book in which to make our to-do lists!