Anyone else cover their school books and copies with wallpaper back in late 70's/early 80's?

[BOOTS52]

If so, what was it like. My sister pointed out to me that we had the same wallpaper that Dougal and Fr. Ted had on their bedroom wall in a kind of yellow and I still have a few copies from school with it. Imagine sending kids into school now with wallpaper on their books/copies. ha !!

My father was a librarian so had the transparent plastic stuff. Very proud of that😅😅

I think wallpaper is an Irish thing mostly.
Kildare had a wallpaper factory that closed down in the late 70s so reject rolls were free for kids to use for decades after!

I now use the plastic shrink wrapping method from “Colibri”. €1 a book and no wrestling with paper rolling up on itself!

I started secondary school in 1978 and used anaglypta wallpaper. This brought back a memory actually. I can see me sat at the dining table ( drop leaf ), measuring and covering all my books. Unfortunately I didn't make a note of which book was which ( probably different sizes), so spent a considerable amount of time working that one out !
First lesson learnt.

I used wrapping paper and sticky backed plastic. But I do remember older text books in the school which had wallpaper on them. I was at school in the 80s and 90s.

I used to use the posters from Smash Hits. 80s

Yep, my parents didn't have money to buy book-coverings, so I had to use whatever was around in the house, often used plain brown wrapping paper, but sometimes left over wallpaper if we didn't have any wrapping paper around.

Lovely trip down memory lane, this!

We used wrapping paper or Smash Hits posters so most of my books had Keanu on them (Kylie and Jason before that). This was Secondary School in the early 90s.

Can I ask, what specifically does ‘copies’ mean in the thread title? I guess it refers to books of some sort, but I’ve not come across it before so assuming it’s common in some regional dialects and not others.

Wallpaper for our school books.
Anaglypta wallpaper for those who were better off.
Billy Connolly says something very funny about this. I can't find it though

We had to do this in the late 60s/early 70s and despite being reasonably 'arty-crafty' I absolutely loathed this. One year we didn't do them and hoped we'd got away with it but the teacher said to the class, "I'm disappointed that none of you have covered your books," we groaned inwardly but as we were a pretty obedient lot we complied. I think most of it was either anaglypta or similar or just the thick cream coloured backing paper.

A few of the girls who had more money to splash about but weren't gifted in the creative department actually bought lightweight blue plastic covers (from Woollies?) which had a little compartment for name, form and subject. We quite envied those as we struggled with the paper and the ruddy glue.

Wallpaper for text books and old brown paper bags for exercise books. Recycling is nothing new!

I would have much preferred that for my kids - I got so sick of having to use clear sticky back plastic on all their exercise books and flimsy folders. Barely had text books!

We had to have our full name embroidered on all our PE kit including sock, plimsolls and hockey boots! All done by hand - there were no shops doing it in the 70s/early 80s. Some of my kit was so small by the time I left just so that I didn't have to redo the new stuff 😆

Waterlego copies are what we did our homework in, am Irish and wondering what you call them where you are. I love the old trips down memory lane also. Loving the person who had a young Keanu on their copies.

Oh yes ! You've just brought it all back to me and I used what ever the house had been decorated in. Being the 70s it was probably brown with some lurid pattern.

Ooh, plimsoll bag made of old curtains, school uniform labels taken from old kit and sewn into newer M&S hand me downs (against school rules).
My DS would be appalled 😀

Brown paper here, and an indoor/ outdoor shoe bag made from curtain fabric, which was kept in our cubby in the corridor all year. We had to change shoes. No muddy shoes in school, and our gym plimsolls were also in the bag.

That’s a memory I had forgotten. I made book covers for mine out of the comics pages in newspapers or an issue of Beano.

It was a thing in the 90s too.

A few kids had either gift wrapping paper or brown paper instead, I assume because they didn't have any leftover wallpaper knocking about, probably with hindsight it was indicative of privilege that the teachers thought everyone did.......

Mine weren't covered with paper, my Mum was a librarian and covered mine with the clear film they use to protect paperback books. She did it immaculately neatly. For some reason the clear covering really narked some of the teachers and they complained about it.

@waterlego, copies are exercise books. You would have a few for each subject and hand them in with homework, your day's school writing, etc in them, for correction. Woe betide anyone found to have been doodling in a copybook.

It's definitely an Irish term but maybe some British regions use it too.

I think people normally used wrapping paper, but at some point in the early 70's my dad had brought a huge amount of paper intended for wrapping flowers and we had to use that - there was still a vast amount left 20 years later after it had wrapped everything going

Yes I remember covering books in wallpaper from 82 onwards. (South London)

Yes!

Do school caretakers still cover sick in sawdust?!

We used computer paper - the wide sheets with green stripes and holes down the side. It wasn’t particularly hardwearing, but both my parents could get it free from work.

We used wrapping paper.

even at the time I thought it was utterly daft to be wrapping jotters.

My mum was a bat maverick though and often covered mine in sticky backed plastic.

Jackie or Smash Hits magazines here

That would be dot matrix printer paper!