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.