Kindle Fire Cover From A Moleskine Journal

[Kevin Haw] is the proud owner of a brand new Kindle Fire. But to protect the investment he wanted a nice looking case and decided that DIY was the way to go. He ended up repurposing a Moleskine journal as a table cover.

You can do this one yourself in under an hour. Most of the pages in these journals are sewn in place and [Kevin] started by cutting the strings with a hobby knife. Once removed, he used a utility knife to separate the pages that were glued to the cover; this leaves you in the state seen above.

Obviously this unfinished look just won’t do. [Kevin] used some red duct tape duct tape to cover the unsightly spine. This adds strength, and does the job of cleaning up the area, but we might have also applied felt (or microfiber cloth) to the entire inside area for a bit more finished look. The final part is mounting the tablet which was accomplished with adhesive Velcro strips. These can be removed from the back of the Kindle Fire later on if you decided to use a different enclosure.

37 thoughts on “Kindle Fire Cover From A Moleskine Journal

    1. Because he does not actually use a real Moleskine, but a journal that looks like one: “A Moleskin style hard cover journal a bit larger than your Kindle. I got this one at target for about $6.”. You could also use a journal you already have filled with scribbles for the sake of recycling.

  1. Not only is the Moleskine more expensive then an actual cover, it doesn’t appear to fit well, look nice, or offer much protection..

    While this is a “hack” in a derogatory sense, it’s certainly not a useful one…

    1. I had to do that once. I was Skiing with my family. After the fun filled day of skiing we returned the rental equipment to the rental office. I then realized my shoes were in the cabin. I hacked my self some shoes out of tape and Trash bags for a long cold walk back to the cabin.

  2. If you like that. You should see the kindle cover I made. I live in Venezuela, where if you go around with any sort of electronic gadget, there is a high probability you will get robbed. So I got an old agenda and did this. Now I’m sure no one is going to steal a Paulo Coelho agenda :-)

    I used the old agenda for the cover, and some foam-like sheets to simulate the pages and to protect the device. Glued it all together with UHU. Total cost: less than $4.

    http://imgur.com/a/QACSf

  3. Please. Come on! This ugly ass shit is no hack by any means. I made a tablet cover from duct tape and the original foam cover it was shipped in. And I dont even consider this a hack!

  4. Wow, I can’t believe someone would destroy one of the best journals in the world to make something as crap as this.

    I don’t want to be one of those ‘this shouldn’t be posted on HaD’ people but seriously.. why is this here?

    I made a case for my kindle fire using a thin piece of foam (the type that is between the keyboard and screen when you buy a new monitor) and some tape. That was more of a hack than this nonsense.

    After a couple days I found the perfect size generic slip case for just $1.20.

    Booo slow news day or what?

      1. I don’t want to argue but I just want to backup my comment a little bit… My girlfriend bought me a moleskin and not only is it totally sexy but it seems to stand up to abuse really well. I dropped mine in the snow in Japan. About 20 minutes later I realised I’d lost it and starting hunting around for it. There it was, sitting in the snow, picked it up and there was no damage at all. The water just wiped right off the edges of the paper, no damage at all.

    1. I’ve had dollar store notebooks with laminated covers that could handle falling in the snow.

      Moleskines aren’t terrible, they’re just way overhyped and incredibly overpriced for what they are. And if you want to waste your money on overpriced notebooks there are nicer, better ones if you shop around (e.g. Paperblanks). I just get generic hardcover sketchbooks with better paper for $5-$10, depending on the size and if there’s a sale.

      Hemmingway and James Joyce never actually used Moleskines, by the way, it’s a new brand “inspired by” their notebooks of preference. So there is no cachet.

  5. HAD submission approval process:

    does the “hack” cost more than buying an off the shelf pre made solution?

    is the “hack” more ugly and less polished than a comparable commercial solution ?

    is the “hack” demonstrably less functional than a easily available off the shelf solution ?

    does the “hack” involve shoddy construction ?

    does the “hack” involve an arduino ?

    well 4 out of 5 isn’t bad, right guys ?

  6. WOW guys, harsh. While I agree it’s not the best hack that’s been made, it’s not the worst either.
    Gotta give the guy credit though, he at least attempted something. And he’s happy with it, so in the long run, that’s what counts.

    Besides, for the ‘pro’ hackers out there, why not just use this one as a starting point and go from there.

    1. I dunno, this may well be the worst thing that’s ever been on HaD. It’s certainly up there in the top 5. It’s on the same level as writing on a piece of cardboard from a cereal box and calling it a hack because you didn’t have any paper to hand.

  7. First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kevin Haw and I’m the guy who did this “shoddy,” “less polished,” “garbage bag taped to my foot” Kindle cover. I am sincerely sorry that I have offended by sharing a quick (15 minute), cheap ($6, if any of you had bothered reading the comments on the photos), and adequate looking (again, take a moment to check out at this better photo) solution to a very minor problem in life. I apologize that it lacks an FPGA, nixie tubes, gold plated contacts, or a 32 bit processor. I apologize that it took three times longer to document than it took to do – obviously, projects need to take months of preparation and a committee of nine to even be called a “hack.”

    But that’s not the worst of it. I also apologize that Mike had the unmitigated gaul to post this. I apologize that he dared to spend his time wordsmithing my lamely phrased submission, ignore my “table” typo, pore over my out of focus photos, and try to slap together something presentable and just a little off the beaten track for you fellows. You guys are spot on! It doesn’t belong here! After all, what right does Mike, a frickin’ editor of this blog who posts tons of stuff for you guys every day, have to determine what belongs here and what doesn’t? I’m sure he’s sitting in his fancy corner office right now, shipping champagne and munching on caviar like all blog editors do, cackling at the sheer evil of his plan to poison HackADay one blog post at a time.

    Bottom line: You want to complain about my $6 hack, fine. It’d be nice to have the courtesy to read the thing instead of taking Mike’s minor “Moleskine” instead of “Moleskine knockoff” error at face value, but what the heck. This is the Internet and I don’t expect much. But when you decide to play “pile on” with a guy and free blog who you’re reading at that very moment…

    …how about just walking away? Vote with your feet. That’s how capitalism works. If you don’t like the blog, why are you wasting your time here?

    Sad, man. Just sad.

    1. @Kevin: first off, we, the readers are free to express our opinions and to walk off when we want, without anyone having to command us out. Second, it’s not that your cover is not cool or anything like that — I use a slightly adjusted piece of cardboard box as my ebook reader cover for example — check out my flickr for pics if you care. We criticise this post (¡¡¡uuuuu, negativity!!!) only because it’s really out of place here and frankly, from a HaD article something more exciting is usually expected. Even a led-blinking-starwars-march-playing arduino is less out of place.

      This would look perfectly normal in the CRAFT blog, because it belongs there. And again, this brings up the problem of responsibility of the blog editors, who put unsuspecting hack-or-not-so-hack authors under fire by putting their stuff in a wrong place.

      1. Thanks for the thoughtful response. I appreciate your explanation, although, I believe you give too much credit to some of these comments. It just always befuddles me when I see people trashing the very blog people are posting on (i.e. the vein of Arduino-hate that can be found in these parts on occasion). Why do they bother reading stuff they loathe so much? Someone takes their own time out to share an idea, but you don’t agree with it – you should add a constructive criticism or move on.

        Yes, it’s a naive view. Yes, I’m just feeding the trolls. But I had to get it out.

        Thanks again.

      1. I dunno, you had to exercise proper sharp-tool safety on yours, whereas he did not. Sarcasm aside, don’t get me wrong, I am all for re-purposing stuff to make it do other useful stuff; objectively, you exercised good creativity here. The project just feels a little uneven in the context of some of the other things here.

    1. That would be pretty cool. It would actually give some proper support to it and protect it better. Also it’s then got that kinda ‘spy’ feel because from the edges it would look like a regular notepad.

  8. LOL I never expected an upturned nose Grey Pooped on factor to show up on HAD, but I’m not surprised it has. In the event it was a genuine Moleskine that was modified it would be fair to assume it was Kevin’s to modify, so why should anyone else care? Not like they are irreplaceable, puts your money down, have a new on delivered to your door.

  9. /rant on
    It’s the internet where peeps reading free blogs have this very high expectation and sense of entitlement.
    /rant off

    Considering that Moleskine’s are NOT the most excellent journals of old, they come off a Chinese assembly line these days.

    Making it out of this version would have been most worthy!

    “A new hacked limited edition where the legend of LEGO® bricks joins the legendary notebook.”

    http://www.moleskine.com/about_us/news/lego.php

  10. I like it. I did something similar for my wife’s. Except I used some packing foam to make a holder for it, and covered the whole inside with felt to protect it.

    Saying that hacking a paper book to make a cover for another device shouldn’t belong here is just wrong. This isn’t “Professional Electronic Engineer’s HAD”. Not every Hack needs to take a fully stocked workbench to complete. If that was the case we wouldn’t have the Google and Firefox hacks on here either, they would just be ff on somebody’s blog post only to be found if you were particularly looking for them.

    I like the variety of posts on the site. Even the variety of difficulty.

    The man had a problem and decided to solve it in a “let’s not go out and do what everyone else is doing” sort of way. Sounds exactly like a hacker way of thinking to me.

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