To prep my bag to be the cover, first thing I want to do is remove any of these excess parts. So this little hanging tag, I'll just tear that off, and I'm just trying not to tear the front of the paper. Again, it's a little more adorable than most also remove any of these handles, I can either cut them off, these just slide right out if you bend them. So I'll do that. And because I need them to be the finished bag, the piece of paper that I need to be a nine by 12 I have a lot of give on this bag considering it's 12 by 17. So now, the bad folds too, so it opens up to be larger.

So what I'm going to do is cut off these parts to start by cutting off the base here and this is where the fold of the bag is. So I'm going to fold this bag just down here so I can get the most use of the paper and then I just Want to trim it right on the base here right after that fold. Take this out my scissors I'll just cut off here. This piece I can make a nicer trim and edge. And then I want to trim the sides as well because it doesn't fit in my trimmer. I'll just trim a good portion of it and then snip it with my scissors.

And then I'll just follow it through here. And right now All I'm trying to do is get a nice solid piece of paper to work with. Here's the fold the gusset do the same thing over here. And I'll start at the base the thinner part. Again, just trim up here. So now I'm left with two pieces of paper and another gusset.

I'll remove the gusset since I don't need that. And then here I have a double layer. So I'll just very carefully remove that layer that folds and here it's reinforced with some cardboard. So again, I wouldn't want to take that off. Do the same thing here on the side. And I'll just take a little bit of this cardboard layer off.

I am going to cut the top piece off so I'm not terribly worried about that. I'll do the same thing with this piece when I need it. So now I'll just slice the top of this off. Again trying to get a nice rectangular image to use. And now I can start to cut it down to size. So now I need to cut this piece to my nine by 12.

And there I have my paper that fits very nicely right on top of my pad. Again, this is just rustics for to make me feel good about my tools. And now I will attach it to the cover with my double sided tape and I'll reinforce the spine with the gaffers tape. I have another book I've already cut this this is just decorative scrapbook paper. And the theme of my journal here, my source book is just Christmas images. So I just took a picture of Christmas paper and cut it down to size.

From here I'll do the same procedure attaching them To test and speed it up so you can see the process. So there you see I have a little overhang with the paper because I didn't do it precisely. I can either just flip this over and use my scissors and trim it or I could use an exacto knife. I'm just going to trim it very carefully down the side as well. And then I'm going to take my gaffers tape and reinforce the spine. So to do that, I just pick up a little bit of tape and I'm trying to eyeball it just to get it down fairly straight.

Flip it over, put it down and then just burnish it. I can put a little label if I want. And then I have my source book. And I do this for all different types. I'll complete this one here as well, and add my labels and then we'll come back and discuss filling our source books.