Personal diaries are needed to record the bright moments of your life, or to speak out and get rid of accumulated negativity. In order to want to keep a diary regularly, you need to know how to design it beautifully.
What can you make a personal diary out of?
Secret thoughts can be written down in any diary or album. The main quality of a diary should be durability. It is worth paying attention to notebooks and workbooks with a sturdy cover.so that the diary does not get wrinkled or damaged during long-term storage.
It is also important to decide what period you plan to record your thoughts on paper. If no more than a week, you can take a thin notebook or a small notepad, and for a diary designed for a year, thick diaries or albums will do.
Diary from a notebook
Notebooks with cardboard or plastic covers are suitable for creating a personal diary. It is advisable to choose the option with rings. In such notebooks it is easy to remove unnecessary sheets without losing the extra ones.
By moving the rings apart, you can add other pages. With a hole punch, it is easy to make holes in magazine clippings and insert them into the diary. Sometimes the cover gets boring, in such notebooks it is possible to change them for others, or insert hand-made ones.
Diary from a notebook
This will be an ideal option for those who love to travel and spend most of their lives on the road. Notebooks do not take up much space, some have a special clamp for attaching a pen. You can choose an option with rings like a notebook, or buy a notebook with a soft, fabric cover.
If you plan to paste pictures into the diary or make secret pockets, it is better to buy a notebook with buttons or Velcro. Such models close, and the pages will not stick out in different directions.
Diary from the album
This type of diary is recommended for those who like to decorate their notes with their own sketches or stickers. Sketchbooks are considered the most convenient options for creating such a personal diary. They are called sketchbooks.
They are compact and easy to use. The pages are not lined, so you can write in any direction, and the drawings are neat, without cells or lines showing through.
Diary folder
A personal diary can be made larger if you use an office ring binder for documents. You can insert sheets into it by making holes with a hole punch or by first placing the paper in a special file. In such a diary you can store large photographs, make collages from them or insert your own drawings on A4 format.
You can make a thin notebook into a folder. You will need thick cardboard for this. The notebook is placed in the center and carefully outlined. Then all the lines are clearly marked with a ruler. You need to make 3 protective strips that will prevent the edges of the notebook from wrinkling and a top cover that is fixed with Velcro, a button or a mini-magnet.
Diary from office paper
LD from office paper can be beautifully decorated in 2 ways:
- Buy special rings for stitching papers, the same as those in large folders. Take the required number of office sheets, cut them in half and make holes for the rings. Then secure all the pages. The cover can be made of cardboard.
- Use a printer to print any lines on each sheet, on both sides. For example, patterns, flowers in the corners of the pages or a pale background. Then fold 5-10 sheets in half, placing them inside each other. Sew with ordinary thread in those places where there are paper clips in the notebook.
Make several such blanks, put them on top of each other, and carefully glue the spine of the future diary with PVA glue and a piece of gauze soaked in it. The cover can be made from an old book. To create bright pages, you can choose colored office paper.
Leather bound diary
These covers look stylish and last longer than others. To create a "leather" diary, you can cover a regular cover with leatherette.
To securely store your diary entries, you can install a special lock. Leather diaries with locks look solid and unusual.
Step-by-step instructions for making a LD cover
You can learn how to design a beautiful personalized home from various master classes.
Below are 3 options for decorating a diary cover with your own hands, with a step-by-step description. When creating a cover, it is important to remember that its appearance should become a creative reflection of the owner's inner world.
Cover from an old book
This design option is suitable for diaries made from office paper, the sheets of which were previously stitched and glued.
Step by step instructions:
- Measure the thickness of the pages and find a suitable book.
- It is important to pay attention to how the pages of the book are glued to the cover.
- Using a utility knife, carefully make a deep cut at the fold of the very first sheet.
- Repeat the steps on the other side.
- The cover should come off the book. All that remains is to cut off the excess paper burrs and remove the layer of old gauze at the fold.
- To make the cover special, you need to cover it with colored paper. You can choose shiny or craft paper. Add cutouts, stickers, rhinestones. In general, change the cover to your taste.
- Soak the folds of the pages well with PVA glue and coat the spine of the book. Insert the sheets tightly into the cover and close the future diary. Leave until completely dry.
You can make the first and last pages of the diary bright and glue them to the cover to cover the old, book-like design, or glue this side with paper before connecting the cover to the pages.
Origami for the cover
Such decorations are not suitable for diaries that are planned to be taken with you on a trip and carried in a purse. The paper figure will quickly tear and become wrinkled. But you can decorate the cover of an origami LD if it is stored in a desk drawer.
Origami heart:
- Cut out a rectangular piece.
- Fold in half lengthwise and crosswise, then straighten so that the fold lines intersect in the center of the rectangle.
- Fold the top corners towards the center.
- Fold the bottom ones up so that their bottom edge matches the side edge.
- Turn the figure over and fold the corners at the top so that the tops of the heart take on a more rounded shape.
- Turn the heart over again.
Where the folded corners are visible, there will be a back side to which glue is applied. The paper figure is glued in the center of the cover or in the corners.
Leather cover
You can learn how to beautifully design a personal document by creating an imitation leather cover in the following master class.
| Tools and materials | Application |
| Unnecessary book | To create a base from its cover. |
| A thick needle or awl | To make holes for the threads. |
| Dermantin or eco-leather | For covering. |
| Strong thick threads | To create reliable seams. |
| PVA glue | To make the cover smooth. |
You will also need scissors, a utility knife and glue.
Instructions:
- Carefully separate the book from the cover.
- Measure its area and cut off the required piece of material, with allowances of 1-2 cm for seams or gluing.
- If you plan to stitch leatherette, you need to make holes for the needle.
- Grease the cover generously with glue and carefully apply the leather, smoothing out any unevenness and pushing out air. This action is necessary so that the leather does not sag or wrinkle when opening the diary.
- Pull the edges tight and secure with Moment glue.
You can make a soft leather cover. To do this, you will need a small piece of foam rubber, which you need to insert between the cardboard and the leatherette. It is more reliable to stitch the edges than to glue them. If you make several holes in a checkerboard pattern, then by choosing buttons, you can stitch them through the cardboard, then you will get the effect of quilted leather.
We offer several more options for the design of the LD cover:
The lace cover looks interesting and romantic:
As you can see, there are a lot of options for designing the cover of a personal diary, it all depends on your imagination and creative imagination.
Front Page Design Ideas
You can place personal information on the first page. For example, first and last name, as well as mobile number and email. This is necessary in case the diary gets lost. The person who opened it will be able to return the important thing to the owner.
At the beginning of the diary, you need to indicate information about the content. This will either be a greeting and a mini-story about what is on the pages, or a ban on reading the secrets for outsiders.
Interior design of pages
The inside of the diary can be multi-colored or designed in some uniform style.
In addition to simple lined or blank pages, you can add something creative. For example, make secret compartments for classified information, or opening windows.
Envelopes, secret pockets, tricks in LD
You can ask your parents how to design a personal document beautifully and unusually. It used to be very popular to make diaries, questionnaires and photo albums with secret places. You can simply bend the sheet at an angle and put small memorable cards there. Another option is to glue 2 pages together, leaving only the tops separate.
You can store clippings and photos in such a hiding place. Quotes and aphorisms can be hidden behind "doors". To do this, draw a door on the page and make cuts so that it opens. On the sheet that will be at the bottom, write a phrase, and glue the pages together, leaving only the "door" uncovered.
Calendar in the diary
Calendars are usually placed after page 2.
You can paste a ready-made pocket calendar or draw your own. It is needed to mark friends' birthdays and other important dates.
Text decoration, patterns, borders on cells
The text can be written with colored pens. When starting a new sentence or paragraph, you need to change the color of the core, then what is written will look bright and attract attention.
Poems or individual phrases can be displayed in frames and borders with patterns. In the margins (if the diary is made from a notebook) you can draw various patterns. Particularly popular are various braids, which are easy to draw by tracing the cells.
Pictures and photos for LD
Pictures and photos need to be printed out and carefully pasted into the diary.
They can be added between written lines or at the end of the text to illustrate your story or convey some vivid emotions.
Inscriptions and cuttings from magazines in the diary
Sometimes, when reading magazines, you want to save an article, poem or statement you liked, but rewriting it is too long or inconvenient.
You can carefully cut out interesting parts of the page and glue them into your personal diary using a glue stick.
How to format quotes, aphorisms and margins of personal diary pages
You can make important notes in the margins or write quotes and aphorisms right there. Various statements often become a preface to a story, so they can be placed before any narrative, brightly highlighted with a marker or outlined with a beautiful frame.
If you know the name of the person who wrote the quote, you can print out a small portrait of him and make the quote into a comic strip. Those who are good at drawing should try to depict the author of the quote naturally or as a caricature.
Design of the last page
You can make a reference book on the last page. Write down all the numbers from your phone book there. This will be a useful section, because smartphones sometimes have various glitches, and numbers can be lost when changing the SIM card or the device itself.
At the end of the diary, make a questionnaire for friends, with simple questions. It will be interesting to read this information many years later. You can make a mini-photo album at the end, where the best pictures of this year, month or week will be placed, depending on the number of sheets.
If a diary has ended and a new one is about to begin, you can write something like: “date of last entry, to be continued!”
It is not difficult to design a personal diary, the main thing is to use your imagination and try to accurately reflect your feelings when creating it. Beautiful decorations and original pages will please the owner both during the recording and many years later, when she begins to reread the diary.
Article formatting:Natalie Podolskaya
Video about designing a personal diary
How to design a beautiful personal document: