At my job, we use a lot of paper. It just comes with the territory of designing things to be printed and distributed among the masses. Sometimes it’s a little discouraging, and I find myself cringing as unused paper (and used, really) goes into the trash. I could be showing my “Mennonite-Liberal-Arts” education here, but throwing away recyclables tears out a little piece of my heart.

On several occasions, I’ve made the fatal mistake of printing an ungodly amount of the wrong project. Accidents happen, I realize, and a bit of grace is necessary. As a fan of mother earth, however, I couldn’t bring myself to throw away half a tree. So it sat there, on my desk. Just staring at me. Begging me to repurpose it. And who am I, to disappoint that poor tree? It needed another life, and I found one for it.

Let me first say, I love notebooks. Who can’t help but love the feeling of a nice, juicy pen writing on a beautiful piece of new paper. I’m one of those people who still buys a planner every year even though I put my whole schedule on my phone calendar. Just the feeling of opening that book full of blank pages thrills me. So why not make these rejected pieces of paper into something new. Something I can use. And, voilá, a new project was formed!

I must say, there are much better ways to go about this first step: cutting the paper. I used scissors and cut them one page at a time. This took a long time. Do not do it my way. Get a paper cutter. But I digress… I did three different sizes: 2 different quarter pages {it’ll make sense when you see the pictures}, as well as half page.

Once I had a good stack of paper {I used my judgement here…however much you like in a pad of paper is ok} I got ready to assemble my notepad. First, I cut a back out of a recycled cereal box {or any other kind of cardboard you have to recycle}, and a cover out of a piece of scrapbook paper. Just to make a it look nicer. I stacked everything in the order I wanted it, and clipped it together on the sides like so…

I found that Modge Podge {my go-to} works fairly well to hold the paper together. Once everything was held in place by the clips, I brushed the Modge Podge along the top edge. I tried to spread it on fairly thick…using two coats. After the second coat was dry, I was able to glue on a piece of paper to cover the edge using a normal, Elmers Gluestick. I clipped the first one together to dry…but realized it wasn’t necessary.

Let the whole thing dry, and you have a usable notepad! Here’s a glimpse of all the notebooks I managed to create {over the last week…this project took longer than I thought.} Now this paper has a new life, and I don’t feel guilty for killing trees. It’s a win-win.

Happy tree-saving!