Rough Guide To How I Recycled My Filofax

The last few weeks have made me really sick of the calender programs on my iPhone. I miss pen and paper, for like 8 years I used my trusty black leather Filofax for everything and it was with me every single day. Then I got my phone and I got caught up in all the applications so the filofax started gathering dust. After a few years without it I missed the poor old thing! I drafted my very first comic book in it so it’s very nostalgic! ^_^

Unfortunately the whole black leather thing doesn’t really go with my look anymore and with no cash to spend it was time for a re-think! There’s no point it just sitting there doing nothing, Filofaxes are there to be uuuused!

Digging into my fabric scraps box I found a couple of pieces for inspiration 😀 I think this post is more of a guide than a tutorial because I’ll just give you the general idea and you can take it and run with it how you like rather than making exact versions.

I decided on a light pink satin cover and ironed it flat. I then used hot glue around the edges of the diary to attach it:

Flattening the whole thing out I trimmed the extra fabric off.

And glued down the edges. I was careful not to glue any of the inside pockets shut in the process.

The outside:

That was a bit plain for me so I decided to add a band of colourful floral fabric that was a scrap from a dress I made ages ago. I ironed it out and folded the edges over.

Very carefully I glued it around the middle.

Cuter already right?

I carefully covered the clasp thingy too and then cut a small hole so it could still click closed. This is it pre-hole:

And post hole showing how it closes:

I was so caught up I kind of forgot to take photos of the next bit sorry! Basically I used the floral fabric to completely cover the inside including all of the pockets. I’m sure you can use your imagination ^_^ I then added lace around the outsides to hide all of the glued areas. So it ended up like this:

I realised I needed some cute paper to write on too! Luckily I had a bunch of supplies left over from a Cristina Re gift bag I was given when we had out tea party earlier in the year so I set to work.