The real thing, what follows is largely a product of web browsing and AI prompts.

Real leather on a spiral notebook is some crazy shit, now when I think about it, those black luxor notebooks have always kind of tried to emulate a leather finish on their black plastic covers.

BTW, its not leather stuck onto a spiral notebook it’s a refillable loose leaf notebook so its going to last a long time and will see itself becoming an object of my haterate.

How it began:

While browsing IndiaLeatherShop, I found some dark grey leather. You know whats also dark grey ? My B5 26 Hole Loose Leaf Notebook from Muji.

So before I bought anything, I thought lets try to visvualize how this could look because I definitely dont want to waste that leather. A bovine animal died for it.

The output looked pretty decent, my initial plan was to just glue some kraft paper to the back of the leather to make it a bit stiffer and then just punch those holes. After generating a few more designs with stiching or no stiching I went with the no stiching.

So then it was time to order the leather and so I did, Distress brown and Dark grey. A grade panels measuring about 30cm*50cm, one for the notebook the other for some other stuff whenever I am inspired to make it. In my usual brilliance I ordered some carnuba wax as well, to treat the leather. And also in my usual brilliance I forgot to buy a punch. Thankfully IndiaLocalShop is a small business, which means they have a slow lead time which also happens to be enough for them to cater to the requests of a random kid on gmail.

Soon the leather arrived, and I was confused wether to make the cover out of the Brown or the Black. Yeah, the dark grey was actually kind of a Black, atleast thats how it looks most of the time.

This led me to consult the few women I know, because I dont know shit about colors.

Anyhow the nishkarsh was to stick with the OG plan.

And so I made the cover, the cutting was stressfull, the polishing and burnishing was tiring. And the end result was underwhelming. But a few days later I think I’ve grown into it ? Anyhow I am not putting the dirty cardboard covers back. We shall see how this ages, for now this shall do.