You know I’m a travel writer, right? (If not, you need to fix that immediately! Go read my travel articles. I’ll wait.) 
Well, as any self-respecting writer, I always have pen and paper with me. As any self-respecting travel writer, I also always have a notebook with me whenever I travel. And, as any self-respecting perfectionist, I wanted something pretty!
The notebook I chose to take with me on the first trips is kind of big. And has all sorts of writing in it, not only travel related. Over this summer I won’t be able to travel much and will mostly go on one-day road trips. I’ll be traveling light, with a small backpack. So I wanted a smaller notebook. And I found the perfect one. Spiral bound, half the size of my old notebook and quite thick for me to use for jotting down thoughts, names of places, ideas, etc. for many years to come.
Yet… I wasn’t thrilled about the cover. It was… plain. It didn’t look like something I’d call a travelogue.
Then, I remembered a tutorial I saw several weeks ago: Ways with Vintage Maps – Woven Notebook Tutorial. (I have an old Atlas from the sixties, which belonged to my uncle and couldn’t wait to see the light of day again.) It was perfect!
I turned my dull notebook into a unique travelogue which I absolutely love!
Here’s the tutorial. It can turn any old notebook into something very pretty, in no time 
Unique (Tropical) Travelogue
You’ll need two pieces of a Map/Atlas etc. that have a mix of watery and land mass areas to give a mix of colors. (I chose one piece with mostly land, Europe, and the other piece was mostly water, Black Sea).
Mark up strips on the opposite side you want to use to avoid ugly black marks. So that you can read the name places you’ll want one map piece to have horizontal strips and one to have vertical strips. (My strips measure 1,5 cm wide and long enough to wrap around my notebook (covers)).
Weigh the bottom of the Vertical pieces down with some cans and start weaving.
When you’ve woven enough to cover the book front and back, add some tape to the bottom of the woven pieces leaving enough of the tape to be able to fold over and seal the ends together.
Repeat for the top and sides.
When you’ve taped each side and folded the edge of the tape over to the back, you should be left with a piece of woven Atlas ‘fabric’ you can now use this to cover your Composition book.
Layer Double sided tape to completely cover the front and back, making sure the spine has tape adhered to it also.
Then lay the back of the book on the woven Atlas ‘fabric’ and take the woven piece and wrap it around the book pressing down to make sure it sticks.
Trim around the edges. After trimming you will have some loose pieces that stick up, glue them down then put notebook under a pile of books to make sure all the pieces properly stuck to the cover.
Trim off the excess and enjoy your recycled Atlas/Map notebook.
(Since I have a notebook with spiral binding, I only stuck my woven map to the covers, both outside and on the inside. I also decorated with a few graphics I recently purchased from a new store in town which sells Graphic 45 products.
I’ll be taking my new travelogue with me on all my upcoming travels and trips, so I also ran a clear scotch tape over the woven map cover – just to make sure it’ll stay clean and not absorb moisture in case I happen to drop it in a puddle or something.)
* Original tutorial by Ways with Vintage Maps – Woven Notebook Tutorial
Happy crafting
