I actually used a piece of cardstock for my waste paper on the front, and just a regular piece of paper for a waste sheet on the back. THEN, I found it’s also helpful to have a piece of “waste” paper at the front and back of the pad to catch the drips when you apply the DIY padding compound. To prepare them for the DIY padding compound, line the sheets up together so that the top edge is as flat as you can get it. And although it’s not absolutely necessary, I discovered it’s nice to have a piece of cardstock at the back of the notepad too. I used 12 sheets of paper cut into four, so that each notepad had 48 pages in it. If you want to be a little fancier, you can print a design or some words on your paper before cutting it into four pieces. A regular 8½” x 11″ sized piece of printer paper cut into four pieces gives you little sheets that are 4¼” x 5½” – – the perfect size for a homemade notepad. I cut each page in half the long way and then cut them in half again across. (I also use this to cut my homemade planner pages and it works great!). I first cut my paper into four pieces using my little paper trimmer.

To get ready to make my homemade notepads, I just used ordinary 8½” x 11″ paper that most of us have around the house for our computer printers. But rather than take that solution, you can also go the creative route and just make your own padding compound alternative instead! I went with this option (of course) because I already had all the supplies I needed in the house. The answer is usually to buy something called padding compound which is an adhesive used to make notepads. If you want to make your own notepads, the first thing you’ll need to figure out is how you’re going to keep the pages stuck together. What to do? It was time to figure out how to make homemade notepads to keep all those little sheets of paper nicely bound together! BUT, sometimes I have a few too many of these little sheets of paper laying around loose and making a bit of mess.

I started using this strategy at my job as a handy way to recycle paper for writing notes, and found I now love to do the same thing at home too.

One of my favorite ways to have some small sized scratch paper to write myself handy notes or lists, is to cut a piece of 8.5×11 paper into four pieces (I cut the paper in half, and then cut in half again).

How to make notepad++ portable