Recycled Inner Tube – Journal

Recycled Inner Tube – Journal

This unique recycled bike inner tube project shows you how to take an inner tube from a bicycle and upcycle it into something crafty and wonderful.

What you need

Old Bicycle Inner Tube,
Paper (printer paper or misc. paper.)
Scissors
Needle
Embroidery Thread
Sewing Machine
Felt.

Instructions

1. Cut on each side of the valve of your inner tube, so that we don’t have to work around it.

Cut inner tube

2. Cut open your inner tube, so that you can lay it flat and it is no longer in a tube.

Cut open inner tube

3. Cut your inner tube pieces into TWO 12″ long pieces. (You can save any extra inner tube for a different project.)

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4. Cut a 12″ x 6″ piece of Felt, you can use any color, I chose red.

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5. Pin down one of your 12″ inner tube pieces to the felt, aligning it along the 12″ side of the felt.. It may not lay perfectly flat, but it’s okay.

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6. Sew it down to the felt, using a zig zag stitch and going along the edges.

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7. Pin the other 12″ inner tube piece down covering the rest of the felt, and sewing it down like the last piece using a zigzag stitch. You may have to add more inner tube pieces to your felt depending on the width of your inner tube. Mine was 3″ wide.

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8. Trim off any extra inner tube that may hang off the edges of the felt.

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9. Taking your paper, Trim it to 8″ x 5&1/2″. Separate it into 3 different stacks.

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10. Fold your paper stacks in half, length wise.

11. Taking 1 of your folded paper stacks, place it onto your felt(with the inner tube on the back.), about 4″ from the left side.

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12. Thread a needle with embroidery thread. Starting in the inside of your folded paper, stick the needle all the way through both your papers, and the felt/inner tubes. Stick your needle back through at the top of your journal, going through the inner tubes/felt and back through the papers. Tie the 2 ends of your embroidery thread.

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13. Repeat with your other 2 paper stacks, placing them onto the felt, just to the right of your 1st paper stack.

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14. There are multiple techniques you could use to keep your journal closed- a button, snaps, etc- but I chose to just use a piece of string. Here’s how:

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15. Cut a 25″ (You can change the length of this, if you wish.) piece of embroidery thread, twine or ribbon and thread into a needle. Poke 1 end into the right edge of your inner tube/felt, and tie a knot. Remove the needle.

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Wrapping the rest of the string around your journal a couple of times and when you get to the end, twist it around itself to keep the journal closed. As I said, you can also use a button, or snaps to close it.

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All done!

What do you think of this project? Let us know!