River song Journal Leather cover

[museumdave]

Hello all,

I know a number of people have done this, but I thought I might share the version I did as well. This was another Christmas gift for my Daughter from a couple of years back.  I guess 2010.  I didn't seem to be able to find the kind of Doctor who stuff she wanted in shops in Canada.  So that Year I mad the found object Sonic screwdriver I also recovered a journal.  I have done some leather tooling before, made a couple of repro pieces for museums and decorative items.  It is pretty easy- it was actually one of the activities we had here for school groups when we had the Viking exhibit- sorry rambling.  
The point is that tooling is actually pretty easy.
You need veg-tan leather the thicker the better.  I had some bits around a cut out a piece to fit. The leather need to be dampened with water to help make the marks. Working on the top grain of the leather (smooth side) I just traced over the lines I wanted with a hard edged tool- I used a leather specific tool, but have seen incredible results using Allen keys, rulers, sharpened sticks ...you name it


One of the tricks here is to do the tooling/ impression on a flat surface as any weird texture marks will imprint on the other side of the leather


Once the cover was dry I painted it with acrylic paint- not what I normally do with leather, but the way to get the colour I wanted.  I glued the cover to an empty store bought journal.  I also created some sketch pages inspired by the journal of impossible things and glued them in randomly through the journal.  It might get in the way a bit if Elizabeth were to want to use the journal as a diary, but she seemed really pleased and it added that kind of ratty loouse page look.

Over all not too bad, and added to a happy christmas.

thanks for looking

M.D.

[Mark]

Hi, nice work there.

I thought about making one of these but know nothing of working with leather and just as much about bookbinding!

Thanks to your post and tips, I might consider doing this sometime after all.