Little Book of Earrings

My sister is about to embark upon a one-and-a-half year long volunteer mission trip for the LDS (Mormon) church, and in light of that, she's been doing tons of shopping and etc.

One thing that she found and absolutely fell in love with was a 'Little Book of Earrings'. Of course, with that price point, not to mention the international shipping to deal with, she asked me to make her one. This is my attempt to do so, and I'd say it turned out pretty well.

 Unlike most of my projects that I post on here, this was a multi-day process, if only because I had to wait for glue to dry.

 All this project took was some felt (color of choice), the sleeve from an old leather jacket, card stock, white Elmer's glue, and a sewing machine.

And some scissors, pins, thread, etc that you always need...

 So, to start with, I go felt. roughly paper-sized sheets can be found anywhere, I got mine at Micheal's.

I started by folding a sheet of felt over and sticking a piece of card stock in the middle, to form one page of the book (I thought).

 I then pinned it on tight, so there wasn't any slipping going on with the card stock and felt, and sewed it.

 I tried to use a rather small seam, but that's up to you. what you should make sure you do, though, is to practice before you actually sew. Try sewing with different tensions, stitch lengths, etc. This gets especially important when it comes time to sew the leather on later. Everything you're going to be sewing is thicker and tougher than normal materials, so just keep that in mind.

I also sewed around the edges for good measure and a better look, and this is what I came up with. I thought the page looked a bit big, so I folded it in half.

 Which, of course, formed two pages. My thought on this pic was that I would, as in the original product, bore holes for each pair of earrings to go. However, I adjusted that thought, thinking she can put her own earrings in, but this was still the best pic I had of the folded-over page.

With two sheets and four pages done, I decided it was enough, and started the binding process. For those of you who've never bound a book, or seen one bound,  you want to be careful, because you need a big, long needle to get through, you can't have your stitches too close to each other, and stitching too many times can weaken the binding, rather than strengthening it.

 This is what the binding looked like when I was done. I used doubled-over thread, and I glued the ends to keep them from going anywhere.

 I then started making the cover. I cut out two pieces of card stock a bit bigger than the pages, like so. I didn't want too much overlap, but you might want a bit more than this.

After that, I got a sheet of white felt, wrapped it around, and sandwiched it in with the two pieces of card stock.

 I wanted this tight, wince this is going to be the cover.

 I then glued the card stock onto the felt, and stuck the whole thing under a box of books overnight to dry. sorry, but the pics I tried to take of that step didn't come out super well.

 After it was done drying, I attached the pages to the cover by sewing. Once again, I used the 'X' pattern. Note that it was much harder this time to get through all of the layers.

 I trimmed the excess white felt, and voila! the book is done.

As long as you don't mind 'done' meaning 'ugly', etc.

 This is the inside, currently.

 Now I started on the pretty part of the cover. This piece of leather is from an old leather jacket of one of my sisters, but you could use sheet leather from a craft store, fabric, or whatever you want.

 This is its size relative to the book.

 It wraps around a little more than 3 times. Perfect, since my sister wants a flap closure.

 To attach this was a bit of a process. First, I positioned it,

 Then I glued the card stock onto the leather, and let it sit overnight again to dry.

 I then trimmed the excess leather around the edges. I wanted to sew the sides under, so I left about half an inch on all sides, but you could be done here.

 The flap closure is still small, so I'll have to trim it.

 This is after I sewed it. As you can see, I'm by no means a professional at this, but I think it worked pretty well.

 I extended the back cover seams all the way down, so when I wrap it around, it should be the right width now.

 Like I said, everyone makes mistakes. My sister is ok with this, though. Or she hasn't noticed it. Try to avoid folding over your leather, because it's a mess to try to fix.

 Here's the length before I trimmed it.

 Here's the length she said she wanted it trimmed to.

 Here's me having cut it into a rounded closure flap. I decided not to hem this one, since leather doesn't fray, and hemming rounded leather just looks bad.

 It was all good, except that it had no way of staying closed.

 This is the book open.

I solved the closure problem with some velcro. I sewed this on, as you can sort of see.

And there we go! Your very own 'Little Book of Earrings".

Enjoy!