I’ve been using a regular size Travellers Notebook for a few months now with Moleskine Cahiers cut down in width as described by Ray in his video here.

That isn’t too difficult to do, but I liked the idea of having a cover that was the correct size for the notebooks without having to trim them down in width. After looking around at the various options from various sellers I noticed there was quite a bit of variance in the prices and the sizes quoted for regular size and full size cahier size Travellers Notebook covers.

In the case of anything made in the USA I would also have to factor in import tax, VAT, shipping etc. So after considering everything I thought about making one of my own. Once again I followed the method used by Ray in another of his videos, but made it bigger.

So how did I size it? Moleskine sell their cahier notebooks in packs of three, so making it take three was an obvious choice, but if I make a bit bigger to be able to take a couple more that would be great.
So I stacked three notebooks together and measured from the back to the front and added on 10mm to allow some over hang which would then allow for extra notebooks.

I found a leather supplier recommended on the Midori resources Facebook group called Leather4Craft. Listed on their Ebay page they have a large number of different colours and sizes of leather pre-cut to size available. I ordered a piece of leather and it arrived very neatly packaged and it was as good as I might have expected. I ordered some leather measuring 30cm x 22cm

To punch the holes for the elastics I bought a couple of leather punches via Amazon which arrived in the post. The advantage of using a hollow punch is that the holes are nicely finished off.

I followed Ray’s video on how to measure and punch the leather and then how to thread the elastics… something I had had practice at doing when I helped to develop the Travellers Notebook cover at Van der Spek in October last year.

I also rounded the corners using a sharp craft knife and a large washer as a template.

I’m really pleased with the end result. The leather supplier also sent me some other samples and I used one the same as the leather for the cover to make a pen holder on the closure elastic.

I’m quite proud of the result, I will certainly consider making some others should I get the need to try a different size.

Have you tried making your own Travellers Notebook cover yet?