Kindle Paperwhite Realistic Leather Book Cover

My wife loves to read but she really only likes real books. Besides the look of books, she loves the feel of books. I love ebooks and actually have a huge collection. So, I made a deal with her. She agreed to try out an ereader. In this case I picked the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite for the high resolution screen and ease of use. If I would make her a case that makes it feel like she's reading a real book.

This is what I came up with and since I remembered to take pictures while I worked on it. I thought I'd share it with others.

My first step what to figure out the dimension and how I wanted it laid out. Looking at the measurements I decided I would layer about 33 pieces of card stock that are 1/4" wide to create the page like appearance on the outside and hold the paperwhite in place. I then played around with pieces of card stock, folding them up to try and find a good size for the cover. I found that using a letter sheet, 11" wide and 7 1/2" high was the perfect size for the paperwhite.

Taking the cover pattern I made, I cut out a correct sized piece of cardboard from an old USPS box, since it has stiff cardboard without being too thick. I then started figuring out how I wanted to decorate the cover. I already knew I had a bunch of various leather scraps laying around. I just laid them out until I saw a pattern that looked good. I cut the pieces to fit and using spray adhesive to mount them to the cover. After gluing them down and applying some weight to make sure the leather was even and well adhered. I sized and cut out a piece of card stock to glue to the inside of the cover to improve the look. And with that the cover is complete.

Using my craft paper cutter, I took 4 sheets of card stock and cut them into 1/4" strips, 8 1/2" long. This ended up being way, way more then I needed but I wanted to be sure I didn't under estimate or if I goofed up along the way. I started by gluing down the sheet that would act as the cover sheet when faux pages were complete. This way it had a solid foundation and I could be sure it wouldn't move. After that I trimmed the 1/4" strips to the correct lengths for each side and started gluing them down with a super strong glue stick.

To make the corners stronger I made sure to alternate between the side pieces and the edge pieces, allowing them to overlap every other layer. This is why there are 3 lengths of strips.

Some little details I worked out as I was layering the strips and finishing up. When i was test fitting the paperwhite as I when along. I realized the power button that locks the screen is on the bottom of the tablet and would not be accessible went in the case. To get around this I created a button by rolling a strip into a tight oval and creating a space for it in the correct location as I went along.

I also realized that I needed a way to keep the cover page down. The solution I came up with is to take pieces of a magnet and place them in a groove under that last layer of the strips. and on the underside of cover page I using flat parts of bobby pins to hold the page down with magnets.

To finish the look, I cut a window out of the cover page to just show the book pages and hide the rest of the tablet.

Overall I really like the way the cover turned out. It's not perfect but it definitely has the overall feel I was going for, hiding the tablet part and making it look and feel like a real book. I didn't leave a space to plug in the power cord but the paperwhite doesn't need charging very often. Plus it's pretty easy to remove it for charging and transferring new books.

I really enjoyed making this and I'm sure we'll get years of service from it.