Making a Leather Journal

(Just for the record, I actually made this journal on February 17th of this year)

I have been wanting to do the leather journal class at the school crafts center for years. Somehow, whenever it was available previously, I was either broke or forgot to sign up and the class had already filled up. With this year being my last year with the student discount, I was determined to do it.

The class itself was a small seven person class. They laid out and prepped everything we needed - mallets, three pre-cut pieces of undyed leather, awls (metal-toothed tools to put holes in the leather for sewing), stamps, and dye.

This is the process we went through:

1. Stamp the leather if you want a design

2. Score the leather at the edges to see where to punch holes

3. Glue and clamp the inner sleeves to the main outer shell

4. Sew the string through the leather to connect the inner sleeves to the outer shell

5. Dye the completed piece and let dry for a few days. Oil it up afterwards.

It seems simple, but sewing through the leather literally took two whole hours on its own. I barely finished by the end of class. My back hurt from hunching over, my fingers hurt from sewing the tedious back and forth stitch needed, but once three hours had passed, I walked out of the class with a finalized leather cover, which will hopefully last for years!

left inside cover, stamped initials

right inside cover, stameped

I really love the final result, and I have been using the leather piece as my go-to journal for basically everything recently.

Before attending the class, I was intimidated (and kinda lazy) by how much time I knew I would have to spend working on this small piece until it was done. My motivation is normally a grade, a deadline, a gift for someone else, but this was entirely for me. I think I have been so used to putting in the work to get some final validation from someone else, that I have given very little time towards creating on my own. Especially within the past year with grad school, but even before that as well. It is small projects like this one that remind me that the result of working on something personal can last much longer than the time it took to create the piece.

Here’s to more creating in 2020.