Sorry this story is so long, but if you want to skip it and jump right to what I made, here it is:
So, remember I was talking about that crappy star punch I bought the other day? Shame on me, I bought another one the same brand, but a little circle one, thinking "Hey, it's a circle. How bad can they screw up a circle?" But, yeah, now I'm really not buying those anymore. It's Provo Craft, a handheld, $1.99 but I get a 50% discount this week for employee appreciation week, so I wasted only 2 dollars on those crappy punches. No more. I got it to work well enough, but I had to punch from both the front and the back of the paper to get it to go all the way through. But, I'm going to have to buy a good one. Any suggestions? I got thumb punches for the flowers, made by All Night Media, and they work great, but I need a handheld for the little circles so I can see to line it up with the cardboard.
Seems like I'm telling this story backwards, but it is chronological. Bought a crappy star punch. Bought paper. Bought crappy little circle punch. Bought good flower punches. Ok, with me?
Next I bought two little 5" x 3" memo notebooks, for 49 cents each. I unbent the spirals at the end, and the spiral wound right out of there, easy peasy. I used the backs only because they're stiff cardboard and the fronts were thin and flimsy. So, I sprayed the cardboard with adhesive, lined them up and stuck them down to my stripey paper, and trimmed off the excess (carefully!) with scissors. Then, I lined up my circle punch with the holes in the cardboard to punch the holes out in the paper too. Then I added the flowers, just to the front cover so I can easily tell which is the front and which is the back when I use it. And put my new front and back all back together with the paper, wound the spiral back in, bent the ends back again, and voila!
Ok, this is totally what I'm going to make for Hannukah presents this year. We have a $5 limit because our family is so big, and I'm going to personalize them by printing the recipient's name in a pretty font on coordinating solids and cutting it out with my fancy scissors. I might even do address books or phone books instead of the plain memo pads. Feel free to steal my idea if you like, it was really fun and easy to make.