Guest post: DIY Moleskine penholder

Hi there, I'm starting the new year with a guest post from my friend Olga. She's pretty much the only person in my area I can discuss crafts and curse suppliers with. We had a couple of jewellery making adventures together. She came up with the idea to start my blog posts with a picture. She used to have a blog, but it's now gone so I'll give you her Instagram if you'd like to know her better. Today she wants to share her tutorial for a penholder for Moleskine (or similar notebooks), let's see it in her own words!

Moleskine penholder tutorial

If you are as an avid note-taking/sketcher person as I am, you know how important it is to have the pen always there with you and not wasting any time fumbling through your stuff finding that damn pen(cil)! I looked online for some ideas, but I didn't want something that would seriously destroy my notebook or involve buying expensive penholders, covers, clip-ons or whatever. So I came up with this.

My solution is simple, unobtrusive, doesn't hinder writing and can be done with household items. It can be done on both softcover and hardcover Moleskine or any other notebooks with an inner pocket.

This is all that you need:

· Scissors
· Rubbery glue
· Your favorite pen (for measurements)
· A paper clip
· Leather or any other material to hold the pen
· A notebook, of course (with an inner pocket)

The implementation steps:

1. Open the notebook in the pocket section. Choose the penholder location

2. Take a piece of leather that should cover your pen and have some extra length to hold on to the notebook. You can make some barely visible marks on the leather where it holds tight to the pen (for step 4)

3. Carefully insert the scissors between the cover and the pocket. Don't use sharp objects as you may damage the cover or the pocket. Make the hole as deep as you need so that you have enough space for the extra leather.

4. Put some glue into the hole and then insert the leather. It will be difficult so consider pushing it with the scissors or another blunt tool as far as necessary. If needed, add more glue.

The marks you made in step 2 will be useful here, as it will indicate how deep you should insert the leather.

5. To fix our penholder into its place, put the clip on top of it. Let it rest for at least half an hour.

This is what the notebook looks like after our little modification. Hardcover version:

The softcover. A bit of bulge will be visible, but with shorter or thinner leather it might not be noticeable at all. In my case, this was the only leather I had at my disposal and I find the results acceptable.

And the inside - clean and beautiful.

I hope this tutorial will be useful to you :)

***

I hope so too, Olga! I use a Moleskine myself, mine is from the "drawing" set with pencils that clip on the cover (and fall off all the time!). I prefer mechanical pencils though so I might use this method to keep my pencil and notebook together.

Thank you for the tutorial! What do you guys think of it?

The Black Kitty (^^)~