John's Journal - a Hunters Diary

Hello there Supernatural fans and John Winchester appreciators!

This following tutorial shows you how I made my leather John Winchesters Journal (for my cosplay).
Enjoy Enjoy!

References

First things first - get to know your stuff.
So I collected some screenshots and photos, made some notes and got a really big helping hand from 2 incredible blogs that are creating their journals,too.

*You can find the links at the end of this tutorial.

Keep in mind, that recreating every single thing of this book is a hell of a mess and work to do^^'

Basis and What You Need

Picture 1:
So I've been asked for the dimensions a few times by now. This is why I made a easy technical sketch with all the helping meassurements. Hope I can help you out with that!

Picture 2:
What you need:
- a soft plastic folder with metal clip inside(originally there are 4 metal clips, but I couldn't get those)
- a pen
- a ruler
- scissors
- light brown to yellow leather(or whatever you would like to use)
Tipp: I got my leftover piece of leather from ebay
- glue
- needle and string/sewing machine
- paper
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Picture 3:
So I started with cutting the original folder so I get the right proportions for my journal. This folder is a great core for the book to be soft and also hard enough .

Picture 4:
You need to cut out ...
2x complete book size
2times 2x for the closure
1x big inlay left side
1x small inlay left side

Note here, that you should add about 5mm around every piece - you need that space to sew it together..later on.

Because you only got this left over leather piece, make sure to position every part of your pattern right before you grab the scissors :D

Creating With Leather

Picture 1:
Here you can see what I meant by giving it 5mm+ around the pattern pieces to cut from the leather.

Picture 2:
Glue one of the big leather pieces onto the back of the folder

Picture 3&4:
By now you can also glue the smaller pieces together

Picture 5:
looking good so far??
to create a smooth and non bubbly surface use a ruler to glue the leather flat onto the folder

Creating With Leather 2

You sure have noticed that you can not simply glue the other big piece of leather onto the inside of the folder...
There is this nastly metallic clip ;)
all you need to do is make a cut right in the middle as long as the metal clip is.

Now you can glue the pieces together und kind of press the leather underneath the metal clip(if possible) to hide the edges.

Finishing Journal-book

You want it to look like it is sewn aroung the edges. You can do this by hand, but please don't hurt yourself. I myself used my sewing machine.

And it's done! I am quiet satisfied for just 1hour of work!

What do you think?
I am happy I could add the rifle pin and some pages already - yet still, having it completed will still take a while.

I hope my step-by-step tutorial helped you guys and whoever would like to have or make one I kept the templates..so if someone wants me to do one for him or her.I am open for the commission!:D

+Pages

I started recreating some of the journals pages for my own one and these are a few examples.

I am so thankful to the 2 following bloggers which helped me a lot with their own research <3
1. DIY Johns Journal
2. Creating John Winchesters Journal