Decoupaged composition notebook

I've been waiting to post about this until I actually completed the project. I saw this decoupaged notebook on Grace Violet and dove directly into my paper stash to find the cutest pattern. GV explains the project using a small comp. notebook but I chose to do the larger version. I apologize for not providing pictures of each step. I know it's sometimes hard to understand how an item was made without the visual portion of the tutorial. My notebook is a bit different than GV's, but you'll get the idea.

Materials:
(1) large composition notebook
(1) piece 12x12 patterened paper
glue
exacto knife
acrylic paint & brush
cutting mat

Just a suggestion: I used ZIP DRY paper glue in this project. It is amazing...by far the best glue I've used for adhering paper. The best!



Directions:
1. Begin by placing the cute patterned paper face down.

2. Put glue on 2/3 of the black and white front cover. Why only on 2/3? Because I realized that one piece of 12x12 paper wasn't going to cover the entire notebook. I decided to use it to cover 2/3 of the front and back covers only. Go ahead and glue the cute paper to the front and back. It doesn't take but a few minutes for the glue to completely dry so I was happy to begin cutting the paper around the edges of the notebook with my exacto knife.

3. Rip off the black binding and paint it (I chose white but it can be any color you deem fit).

4. Finally, to hide the uneven sides of my paint job, as well as to cover that last bit of black and white on the front and back, I glued a matching solid color of paper (matching wasn't hard for me since the back side of the cute paper was reversible).


This was my first time doing this and I really enjoyed it. I am already working on notebook #2. Since taking this picture, I've added a light blue piece of ribbon to hide the seam between the white paint and blue solid paper.

It's weird how I love the way my finished products turn out but I just don't think they're worthy of posting on etsy.com, etc. I see so many flaws on my final result that I feel it would be impossible to handcraft anything without them occuring. Who would want to pay money for something that isn't perfect? Would I be jipping the buyer? Any thoughts?