blink and you'll miss it: Making a Kindle Case: The Prototype

Friday, April 27, 2012

Making a Kindle Case: The Prototype

I'll start this post by saying that I am an adamant book person.

People would comment on how much they thought I'd enjoy an eReader and I'd get angry about it.

I'd point to the piles of books in my house and warble on about the smell of a book, the feel of a page in your hands, the ability to doodle in margins. I would wax painfully on and on about how I was sure I'd never fall for the treacherous lure of the Kindle.

This is me.

Eating crow.

Damn I love my Kindle.

And. Once I discovered that I'd fallen, hard core, for this lovely little bit of technology, I new I needed a spiffy new case for it. And, thinking I was being original, I decided I'd be snarky about it and make one out of an old hardbound book. Then, for kicks I decided I'd scoot around the interwebs and see what I could find in the way of easy tutorials. Smack me upside the head and call me Charlie, everyone and their brother has had the same idea I had.

So not original, but awesome nonetheless. I snagged a few old, but still in good condition, hardbound books from Goodwill for a buck a piece. I used a utility knife to splice the pages out, leaving a lovely little shell.

I just used up some scraps I had to hand and fashioned a pocket on the left hand side for storing my baby safely and attached two bits of wide elastic to the right hand side, to keep it secure while reading, without being obtrusive.

I used some E6000to attach everything to the book shell and clamped it all together with some binder clips over night. It's not perfect, but that's okay because it's just the prototype. Never mind the visible stitching, or the area of the shell you can see outside of the fabric...that'll all get revised & perfected in the next version.