Crafting a Travellers Journal out of Old Boots

One can never have enough sketchbooks - thus I decided to make a adventurously looking travellers journal out of my old leather boots!

Design

After watching Nerdforge’s video on bookbinding using leather from old boots, I decided to give the method a try. I used leather from old winter boots of mine that were already falling apart and started cutting them up. I ended up with two of these leather pieces: With the material on hand, I ordered some 200 gsm painting paper. It turned out to be quite difficult to work with due to the thickness of the pages, so I’d recommend using thinner paper. I proceeded with making a design sketch including a shell button for closure:

Materials

Overall, I ended up using these materials:

• one leather boot
• red yarn for topstitching
• thread for stitching the textblock together
• green and red yarn for bookmarks
• 21 pages of 200 gsm paper
• a needle + pliers for pulling it through the leather

Crafting Process

I began by folding the 21 pages in half and stacking them into signatures of three. For stitching them together into a textblock, I used the method shown in Nerdforge’s video. However, I recommend watching a more detailed tutorial on that matter.

I proceeded by cutting the biggest possible rectangular piece out of the leather from one boot whilst trying to keep the preexisting seams of the boots parallel to the edges. In retrospective, I was a bit too eager on only using one boot for my endeavors which resulted in having to deal with quite warped leather from the ankle area.

After cutting out the piece, I marked the middle and long-stitched my textblock to it using red yarn. This serves decorational purposes as well as uniting pages and leather. In order to attach the rest of my textblock to the leather, I decided to deviate from my initial design sketch by folding any excess leather over the first and last page and topstitching them together. I greatly advise gluing cardstock to the last pages before doing so for increased stability and a lower chance of tearing the paper - especially when working with thinner pages.

To add some final elements to the book, I braided some red and green yarn into strands and carefully glued them in between spine and textblock as bookmarks. Also, I sewed on the button and added a loop of green braid as a closure mechanism.

The Final Result

Here’s how my travellers journal turned out! I really like the look and feel of it. Altough there are many imperfections, I am very happy with it!

I could imagine using a sketchbook like this for taking notes in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign - or just using it for drawing, taking notes and coming up with future projects!