My 3-year-old daughter is rarely without a piece of paper and crayons in her hands. Drawing has definitely become one of her favorite activities, so I guess I should not have been surprised when she made her own book. Using a few scraps of card stock and pieces of Japanese washi tape (previously being used to display her drawings on the wall), she bound together a simple but adorable little book.

That book is the inspiration for this project, which is super easy but can be elaborated upon to create beautiful cards, journals or invitations.

I started by cutting the paper. I used card stock cut to 8 1/2 x 4 inches for the cover and standard weight paper cut to 8 x 3 1/2 for the inside pages. For the inside, I used a stack of 5 sheets of paper (resulting in 10 pages in the book).  You could add more or less to suit the purpose of your journal.

I folded the cover and the pages, and then I centered them on top of a strip of washi tape (sticky side facing up).

I secured the pages to the cover by wrapping the tape around the entire stack of pages.

Next, I folded the book, pressing firmly along the taped area and smoothing out any folds in the tape. Washi tape is very forgiving and if things aren't aligned properly, you should be able to remove the tape and start over.

Once the book was assembled, I decorated it with more washi tape. My daughter was pretty excited to find a stack of new journals waiting for her when she got home from school.            Looks like I'll be making more soon.

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