Leather Notebook Cover

For a long time I wanted a leather cover for my assortement of daily used notebooks. I have one for bullet journaling, one for work related notes, one as diary, one for scribbling and finally one for improving my handwriting.

To get this bunch together, I craved really long for a "Taschenbegleiter" from RoterFaden but they are far too expensive for my budget. As I created a small wallet with a money clip some weeks ago, I finally found a solution!
I have never thought about using moneyclips for this purpose, but at last I did.

First I created a pattern which covers the notebooks, but is only a little bit bigger than them. I wanted it to have as less overhead as possible.
I used artifical leather table place mats first to get the proper sizing for the slots for the clips.

After the PU leather "master" I adjusted the spacing of the slots to 14mm, which gives enough grip to the clips but loose enough to change them.

I bought goat skin leather in two thicknesses:

• Inside: ~1-1.2mm
• Outside: ~2.5mm

Both are vegtan leather and really soft. I glued them together with odorless glue (Aquilim 315) on the outside flaps only and not in the middle where the clips will go.
After glueing it together I punched the holes and cut out the final outer form (the inner around the clips was done before).
The font I used is a template is one from TonySeePatterns.

Due to the softness of the leathers the cover stays open and closed really well even without a rubber band.

After sewing the cover and putting in the clips (rubber band still missing) I filled in all my notebooks. As fountain pen enthusiast I recommend this selection (Simply Genius; Landré/Oxford; Clairefontaine), as they are usable really well with inks.

In the following picture you can see the size of the cover.

To finish and "age" the leather I simply used a beeswax shoe grease, which darkens the leather. If you rub the grease in with a towel and pressure, you can darken it even more - you can see it around the front border.

To finish it I added a eyelet in the back and sewed on a red rubber band to keep it closed.

I'm happy how it looks. It is also really practical.