Steampunk Journal Necklace

Well, this was me experimenting with journal/book making, leather and rub-n-buff. All awesome things.

To begin with, get your pages. I used "cover stock" paper, but card stock would also work, as would regular printer paper, though that doesn't give quite as nice an effect when ripped.

Rip your pages to size. I used pages about 2.5"x 1.5". This resulted in folded-over pages almost square, which I liked. The ripping is also aesthetic. Once they are ripped and folded in half, place them in piles of 3-4 pages.

Next, punch through the pages in each pile and sew them together. Once you have more than 3-4 pages, this gets difficult, but with only 3 or 4 pages, your needle itself should be able to get through.

Try not to make too many holes, and make sure you use a lot of thread, or at least thick thread.

This is what the end product should look like for each pile of pages.

Get four piles of pages, like so, and a strip of paper as wide as your pages, and about 3 times as long.

Make folds in the middles, like so, so that each pile of pages will be able to fit in each crease.

Slather glue along this whole side of paper now, paying special attention to getting glue in the creases.

Tuck each pile of pages into each crease, and press it closed.

When everything is done drying (place it under heavy books and leave it for a few hours), measure the size of leather you want to use to cover it.

I used very thin leather for this project, actually taken from an old leather jacket. I initially used a piece a bit wider and about three times as long, but ended up trimming it.

My initial thought was to have the cover sit like this, but because I didn't have any fasteners that would work like that, I trimmed it back.

My cover finally looked like this. I glued it on to the pages with white school glue. Nothing fancy, but it did its job.

I decided to add a tie closure to the book to give a different aesthetic.

It turns out that adding the tie was one of the more difficult parts of this project, in that cutting slits just the right length without cutting through the leather was difficult, but I like how it turned out.

Next, I used a needle to open a hole in the spine that I then added a jump ring to, to attach it to a necklace.

This was the jump ring I used. Just a bunch of twisted wire that left room for the chain.

Next I used a pencil to draw gears onto the leather with rub-n-buff.

And there we go!

I actually made two more of these, and adding extra metal gears onto the covers, and random dangling bits makes it look even cooler.

Card Notebooks

Making mini-notebooks is kind of fun, and leaves you with a nifty little thing in which to write stuff, without having to run to the store, and these are completely customizable! As long as you have a card, or a sheet of card stock, this will work.

That being said, you will also need several sheets of notebook paper.

Get said notebook paper, and trim it to size. My card was conveniently sized for cutting the notebook paper in half, and then folding it. You do whatever will fit your card best.

Fold it in half, like so. You want your pages to be in two even piles now.

As shown here, cut a slit down the middle of the fold. It doesn't have to be perfect, but leave plenty of room on the ends.

On the OTHER stack of paper, cut the ends to where the slit ended on your first stack, like so.

Now, put your two stacks together, like so. Push it all the way through, fold and flatten it.

At this point, the only thing really left to do is put a cover on your notebook.

If you want more pages than 10, you will need to make several separate stacks of pages, then sew them together. I didn't do that here, but it can be done.

I made several of these notebooks- each of those piles got a separate cover.

All that remains for you to do is to cover the inside of the card with glue, sandwich the pages in the middle, and put it under a nice, heavy book for a few hours while it dries. When it's dry, your notebook is done!

DIY Camelbak Backpack

Well.. this is one of those things that I cheated on. Yes, it's a DIY, and yes, it is a functional Camelbak Backpack, but I cheated on it.
The Camelbak consists of two main parts: the bladder, that actually holds the water, and the backpack, which holds the bladder in a convenient position on your back. I spent $10 on a knock-off brand bladder from Walmart. Though I'm sure it could be DIY-ed, finding food grade materials that I was familiar with was difficult, and outside of my money range, so I cheated and bought a pre-made one.

The rest, however, I DIY-ed. I got an old pair of my brother's too-small jeans (they don't have to fit too snugly or too loosely- I did this part and the next mostly because I was worried that it would rip, tear, get ruined, or pull itself apart once full under the strains of a Via Ferrata that I was putting it through).

I cut off a part of the pants leg a bit longer than the bladder itself.

I then sewed the end shut. I repeated these steps with a pair of sweatpants, which I put inside the jeans/denim layer. this served to both hold the bladder and to provide padding for it against being hit and such.

I cut holes for the fill part of the bladder and the nozzle for the tube, and used paracord to tie the top of the sack closed, and also to tie the bladder to the top of the pack.

As it turns out, all of my concerns about the structural integrity of the bladder were pretty unfounded. It stayed together, and still works even now. Do I regret putting this much time into the padding, though? Not at all.

I then got a really old backpack we had around the house still. I cut a slit at the top for the drinking tube to go through, then cut slits along the sides, behind the zipper, and laced the bladder in.

I then attached velcro to both the strap I wanted the tube to stay on, and the tube itself. When I went to fill it and use it, it just worked. Ta-daa!

This could be accomplished with any size or style of backpack you want to use, and additional straps could be added for additional support.