Tutorial: Removable/ReusableTextbook Cover

Happy Lunar New year everyone!
(Apologising for the lack of posts, school has sucked the life out of me and clawing it back takes time.)

In the spirit of 'Back to school' for us here in Australasia, I decided to share this text book cover  made a while ago. It was awesome because my textbook always screamed 'HEY I BELONG TO ALETHEA AND I'M BRIGHT BLUUUUUUUUE!!!!!!!' whenever the maths cupboard was open.



 Hooray! It's removable because textbooks are only on loan for each year (we don't write in them, in fact, I barely opened mine...). Now your textbook can feel brand new again!
(Hopefully, you also feel motivated to open it in times of need...)

MAKE YOUR OWN TEXTBOOK COVER

You'll need:

- The textbook you wish to make a cover for
- A large sheet of paper, or several. I used a coffee club newspaper that I nabbed from one of the 29392873 overpriced Remuera cafes, and a blank piece of A4 printer paper.
- A Plastic pocket, or a similar, flat plastic bag (mine is scavenged from a new folder which conveniently came with plastic wrap)
- Some form of decoration - I used a magazine to do a snazzy collage, but it's free choice here.
-  Duraseal (Adhesive Plastic stuff.)
- The basics, Scissors, Glue, Tape, A pen etc.

Start by wrapping your textbook with the large piece of paper, folding the edges over the cover like so.





My piece of paper wasn't quite large enough to cover the whole textbook, so if you're in the same situation, fear not! After wrapping my book as efficiently as possible, I just glued a piece of blank white paper suitably to cover the rest of the book (later, this functioned as an ideal place to write the subject and level of the book you've covered in permanent marker.) You want to leave about 5mm at each end of the cover so that the textbook can comfortably close.

Decorate. With the help of siblings I cut a bunch of blue and yellow (oh the joys of school patriotism) squares from magazines and proceeded to arrange them in a psychedelic checker board array.

Once your cover is done, grab that plastic sheet and cut it in half. You should have enough plastic pocket to cover 2 thirds of the cover. Less is fine, but no more than 2 thirds (if you have too little you can always use blue tack). Tape it to the cover, allowing a couple of millimetres extra, it's transparent so accuracy isn't too important. (Those purple streaks are glue, the cool coloured kind!)



Now, duraseal the cover as if covering a normal exercise book.

Done! I stuck blue tack on the spine of my textbook so the cover wouldn't bubble up when I opened it.



This year, my maths book is again cuddled up and cosy in it's shiny cover, hiding a much more daunting year of maths...I'll post again if I survive the dreaded surds.