Zippered Book Case

So, this is a homemade "Zippered book case". This is very useful especially for book lovers. When you go out for a camp or a picnic this is useful to carry your favorite book and some extra supplies like pens or pencils in one place. There is a zipper which opens up space for the supplies and the book. This book case can work well for book series as all the books of the series have the same dimension. So if you have any Harry potter series, Game of Thrones series or any other book series, join with me and make this cool Book case!

1.Cardboard

2.Fabric or decorative paper

3.Sewing supplies

4.Stapler

5.Fabric glue

6.Zipper

and some other basic supplies like glue, ruler, scissors etc....

To make a book case, I needed to find something stiff and even foldable. For that, I found Carboard as a useful material for this project. And, take a medium thin cardboard so that it can fold. I took a sheet of carboard which is thrice as bigger as the book. Then we can continue by taking the measurements. I'm taking the length as left to right and width as top to bottom, the thickness of the book as height.

Taking measurements: I have a flat sheet of cardboard. Now, to make a book case we need to copy down the measurements of the unfolded book and extend the measurements to fit in the book and other supplies. And after that we need to fold the bookcase into it's form.

1. Height of the bookcase (Image 4,5) : I put down the book on the sheet of the cardboard and took the measurements of the unfolded book. For that, I put down the front face of the book on the sheet of the cardboard and drew the outline. Then I considered the side cover of the book and drew the outline. Now this will become the height of the bookcase when we fold it in form. I Increased that measurement to about 1 cm to the right side, so that the book can fit inside with ease. Then I continued to draw the outline of the back face / back cover of the book.

2. Length (Left to right) (Image 6): To fit the book inside the case, we need to increase the measurements further more. I increased a length of 4 cm on either sides of the bookcase(left and right). So, final length was 37 cm.

3. Then comes the width (from top to bottom) (Image 7) : I increased a length of 2 cm on either sides of the bookcase (top and bottom) with a total width of 24 cm.

Remember, we must increase the dimensions of the bookcase to fit the book inside and also to glue the zipper in the book case which consumes space. There is no problem if we take extra measurements also, but do not take less measurements. If we take perfect measurements as of the book, there will be no space for the book to fit in as the zipper also consumes space.

Once I was done taking the measurements on the cardboard sheet, I the cut the cardboard with the extra measurements.

Up to now, it was the unfolded book case. Now we have to fold it in a form of a book. I folded the left part of the book to right side and right part to left side with the help of a ruler. But do not fold in half. We need the third side of the book case which is the middle part which I called as the height of the book.

Now, it looked like a trifold and pretty much like a book without any pages.

You might be wondering that why am I decorating and covering the book before installing the zipper. It is not possible to cover the book case after adding the zipper. So, we will cover and decorate the book case before adding the zipper.

I wanted the bookcase to have a smooth texture, so I covered it with cotton fabric. You can cover it with decorative / colored paper also. I just took a cloth bigger than the bookcase, then wrapped it around the cardboard and stapled it with the cardboard.

To make it look much better, I just made a like symbol and some extra elements on paper and then I cut it and glued it to the fabric. I don't know how I got that idea, but it looks nice. Also, be careful at the edges and crosscut the fabric to change the direction of the cloth or just wrap it as you wrap a book cover.

You can find zippers in old backpacks and luggage bags. I needed a 22 inch zipper for my book cover. After bringing out the zipper, I stitched 2 strips of cloth along with the zipper on both the sides so that it can be stapled with the bookcase. My sewing machine wasn't working for this thing as I didn't cut some extra cloth with the zipper. But, thank you Mom for helping me by sewing the zipper for me!

That's it. Your zipper is ready to go into the book case.

This the hardest part of the instructable. This needs some skill and creativity and it takes time. But, no problem. Take you own time and eventually you will get it right.

Image 2,3,4: I Turned the zipper face down and stapled the strip of the cloth with the zipper on the three sides of the book case. But, we need to repeat the process on the other side of the book case too.

Image 6,7,8: Now, I stapled the other half/other strip of the zipper (facing down) to the three sides of the other face of the book case.

Image 11: For stapling the other strip of the zipper cloth to the other part of the book, I just unzipped and repeated the same process which I did up to now to the other side. I am stapling instead of sewing because, sewing the cloth with the cardboard is not possible. So, you can either glue or staple. I stapled and even glued for extra backup so that the fabric would not come off the bookcase.

After finishing stapling the zipper to the book case, make sure that the zipper is not coming out and it is moving and working correctly. Then, finally cut off the excess zipper at the end. Now, we have to finish the zipper end and prevent the zipper from coming out.

For that stitch a piece of fabric to the zipper end and block the zipper's way at the end. After finishing the book case put some weight on it for some time so that it stays in it's place.

Now your zipper book case is complete! You can store books, pens, pencils and many other stationary stuff inside this case and take it to have a fun trip or picnics.

Note: This is a very simple instructable if you understand the basic idea on how it works and all. But if you want more clarity please do consider the images. Images make your work way more easy. This was a bit hard instructable for me to describe in words. So please consider the images to understand the instructable clearly.

Either way, thank you for checking out my instructable and have a great day!