Diaries are a popular stocking filler, but they can be a bit dull. Why not add brighten up a cheap and cheerful diary or notebook with your own personlised cover? Here’s how:

I’m going to use an standard A5 diary from Rymans.

It comes with a boring black cover, but we’re going to change that! For my diary I’m going to go a bit Web 2.0 and generate a visualisation of Diginate’s twitter followers using www.tweepskey.com. All you have to do is pop in your twitter address (in our case twitter.com/diginate and it generates a lovely graphic that’s perfect for covering my diary. Here’s the image:

Next I need to arrange the graphic for print. Here’s a template.

I’m going to use a Contour Cut Matt Vinyl Sticker for this one. The size of the sticker is 32.5cm x 22.5cm. Here’s the finished sticker and diary:

To apply the sticker lay it flat and unpeel a small amount of the backing paper:

You can then position the diary on the sticker:

Once it’s in the right place flip the diary over and smooth the sticker on whilst gradually removing the backing. Be careful to apply it properly into the grooves of the spine.

Once you have the whole sticker on the diary flip it over the stick the tabs down on the reverse of the cover. Here’s my finished diary:

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? In fact, I was so pleased with the finished result I did a clip binder as well.

Why not give it a go and kick off somebody’s year with some striking desk stationary!