The back to school sales are great for stocking up on notebooks, pencils, glue, and office supplies, but the best deals are always on the most plain, dull looking items. I got notebooks like these, which just come in a handful of solid colors for less than 20 cents each. Not very exciting or enticing to write in.

My Princess has been begging for a pretty notebook of her own, so I decided to make one for her. It needed to be either something to do with a princess or dancing. So I cut a silhouette of a ballerina from some glitter scrapbook paper and chose a background paper. I decided to give the background paper a texture by covering it with mod podge and laying crinkled tissue paper on top. When that dried, it seemed to need something more. So I pulled out the craft foam for some stamps (see last week’s post) and stamped some flowers and the word DANCE on top of the tissue paper.Then it was time to glue the paper onto the cover of the notebook with mod podge and glue the ballerina on top of that. When all was dried another layer of mod podge was put over the whole cover. A little dancing princess needs pencils, so rather than spend money on fancier pencils, I cut one inch strips of scrapbook paper to cover some plain pencils. These were also glued with mod podge.This would be a great activity to do with your kids before school starts. Instead of buying the more expensive notebooks and pencils, customise the less expensive ones. Your kids can choose designs that are of interest to them and even personalize them with their names. Then they will have something no one else will. Of course, you can buy supplies like the fancy designed duct tape or washi tape to cover your notebooks and pencils with as well. Or you could cut out pictures and words from magazines to cover a notebook and pencils and have personalized design with little cost.

Help your kids get creative with back to school preparation!