How To Make Your Own Pocket Sized Bullet Journal Leather Cover

While I do use a full size Bullet Journal at the office and at home, when I’m out and about, I carry a 3.5×5.5 inch pocket journal to keep ideas, notes and anything else that I want to remember.

Pocket Journals are really convenient for jotting notes and ideas, and there are many ways to incorporate the use of secondary journals in to your Bullet Journal, but the one thing that has always bugged me is that pocket journals never hold up in the pocket well.

I supposed that you could go on Amazon and buy a nice, leather cover, but some of those options cost over $75. I really can’t justify spending $75 on a pocket journal.

I decided that I’d create a simple leather pocket journal myself.

Locally, I have a Michaels about half a mile from my house. I found the leather I needed there for around $14.

Supplies used to make the notebook (scissors not shown – my wife repo’ed them).

In order to make the notebook cover, I gathered the following supplies:

Leather Patch from Michaels (8×11 inches)
Rubber Band from my office supplies
Eight Binder Clips
Pocket Journal (Fold Journal shown)
Scissors (not shown)

I simply cut the leather with run-of-the-mill scissors down to 7×5.5 inches. Remember that you have to cover both the front and back.

Being the first time I did leatherwork, I didn’t realize that I should have added another tenth of an inch or so because the leather needed to be folded over the pocket journal.

In the image, you’ll see that the cover doesn’t really cover the notebook as well as it should. Also I kind of messed up the folding.

When you fold the leather, wet the area where it will need to fold over with water.

I used black binder clips to hold the notebook closed as it slowly creased (I don’t know if there is a real term for this process of making the crease stick).

I used blinder clips to hold the fold in place

I put the notebook cover outside in the sun all day so that the fold would hold. It was out for about eight hours, and then I left it out on the counter for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I cut a small slit on the top and bottom of the fold and put a regular office rubber band into the cuts to hold the notebook in the cover.