Better late than never

This past Christmas my husband gave me a kindle Fire to help support my reading habit-which is only outshone by my scrapping habit!  We were leaving on vacation a few weeks after Christmas and during that time I searched high and low for a cover that I loved, something that was functional yet still aesthetically pleasing.  Amazon had very few choices, the ones I could afford being very dull and lacking anything interesting, and the ones I loved were just way too many pennies for my liking. 

So I opted for the DIY route.  It took me a bit of planning to figure it out, but I absolutely love the outcome!  It held up during all our travels and still looks in excellent shape!  And all for under $5.00!

I purchased my book in the clearance section of Half Price books for a whole dollar I looked for one that was roughly a quarter inch taller and half an inch wider than my kindle.  When I got home I cut the innards out of my book using my craft knife and tucked them away to use on scrappy pages in the future.

Once my book cover was naked I covered the entire thing in the foam sheets, both inside and outside.  I also covered the inner and outer spine.  To allow for easy closing I cut my foam into different sections, one each for the spine and back and front covers.  So I ended up with 6 pieces for the inside and outside.  I adhered these down with fabri-tac and let sit.

The outer cover was made using a fat quarter from my fabric stash, when the glue was dry I laid my book open flat on my fabric square and trimmed that down so it was roughly 2 inches larger than my book on all sides.  I used my mad book covering skills from high school to create a cover for the outside of my book which I then glued down to prevent it from slipping around. 

Prior to lining the cover with felt I added ribbons for a closure, two on each side.  The end of each ribbon was sealed with a match to prevent unraveling.  I measured roughly and inch and a half in from the top and bottom. 

On the right side of my cover I laid my kindle out to check sizing and where the elastic loops would go.  I marked the foam approximately where the elastic would go.  I cut for pieces of elastic and wrapped them around the corner of my kindle.  This gave me the rough size of the loop.  Since I was using elastic, and to give myself a snug hold I cut the elastic the exact size of the kindle and sewed the two ends together.  I then adhered a loop of elastic to each corner using fabri-tac.

I measured the inside of my cover to get the dimension of the felt and cut it into one large piece.  I cut slits in the felt where the loops would come through and pulled them through before adhering the felt down. And voila!  A lovely padded kindle cover! 

The outside was decorated with a peacock feather from Michaels-the largest investment of the project.  I used the same ribbon from my closure but this time I glued a piece of brown ribbon to the back of it to give it a bit more structure.  The charms were from a tag destroyed by my puppy which I added to a Tim Holtz memo pin and stuck into my foam padding.

Lobster taking a break on deck with the kindle

Supplies needed:

Hard cover book-roughly the size of your e-reader

Foam sheets

A fat quarter of fabric

Felt

1/4" elastic

Fabri-tac

Ribbons

Scissors

craft knife

Thread and needle



Tweet

Pin It