Monday, February 04, 2008

Moleskine Pen Holder

I've been pondering for a while how to add a pen holder to my Moleskine plain page Reporter notebook. I had a vague idea of the approach I wanted to use, so I was half-way there. Yesterday I got the urge to do a search, and found a lot of entries - to my surprise - but they all miss the mark. I want a simple design, non-destructive, with a minimal impact to the book itself, and with zero impact to the size of the book. After all, what's the point of getting a small book to put in your pocket, and then adding bulk to it. Let's face it, even the Reporters aren't that small. Anyway...

If you don't want to measure this out manually, I recommend laying it out using OpenOffice, and exporting as a PDF. Point of that is Acrobat Reader will let you print at 100% scale, and the excess is just trimmed. OO doesn't seem to scale that well.

Instructions:

  1. Cut the above shape out of some stiff paper, or thin card
  2. Tuck the big tab into the pocket on the inside of the back cover of the Moleskine
  3. Fold the horizontal strip round between the back of the card and the back cover
  4. Insert your favourite pen close to the Moleskine, and pull the tab until the pen is held snugly
  5. If desired, trim the excess from the opposite side of the Moleskine
The pressure of the closed book should keep the pen loop in place. If you like, you can glue the loop in place, but then you can't use a different size pen so easily.

QED - Non-destructive, simple, zero impact on size!
(If you put the book, and the pen in your pocket it's the same size with, or without the pen holder, less the thickness of the card you use. I call that zero size difference ;-)


Note: I find no way to attach a PDF image, or arbitrary file to a Blogger post.

10 comments:

stevlight said...

We need a photo of what this looks like PLEASE!!!

Unknown said...

Another quite simple method ist to use several stripes of insulation tape and make a tube in the size of your pen. Just put together the sticky sides of the tape where the pen should be and leave a margin to attach all this to the side of your moleskin.
Might sound a bit complicated the way I described it, but it is done in a few minutes.
And the insulation tape is removable without damaging your moleskin.

Matthew Schmeer said...

Why not post your PDF template for us?

Unknown said...

Tape is easy, and no matter how clean it seems to come off, it always leaves something behind. Eventually your book will show signs - dirt collecting in the tape glue residue, layers of residue from replacing it over, and over, glue absorbed into the paper, etc. Besides, there are buckets of posts on how to use tape to make a pen holder.

Ralf Klüber said...

hello, my first contribution to the moleskine community. I also had the problem of a (not existing) pen holder for my moleskine.

Please have a look how I solved this matter.

http://flickr.com/photos/vodafonix/2248200131/

Mekkaniak said...

Reminds me of mine, a little bit more elaborate, pen holder for the Reporter. http://mekkaniak.blogspot.com/ 2006/07/moleskine-reporter-diy-pen-holder.html

RP said...

i use my moleskin with a fountain pen. the flow on the paper is excellent then.
If you see from my perspective the moleskin shouldnt attach a pen with it simply coz the beauty of journal is so...
If i am middle of writing something i usually hold it against the front cover.
Apology if i am out of topic but couldnt hide my love for moleskin :)

Anonymous said...

Okay, so, done to death, just about. Yes. But I liked this pen holder the best. Unfortunately, it was for the Reporter Notebook which I don't use. So here is my mod, based on your mod, for the "regular" notebook. I like the Squared notebook, myself.

My Blogosite With My Moleskine mod

Unknown said...

Nice one, JDS. If anyone uses a larger Moleskine, they should look at his.

Dan Kerschen said...

Hey! I've very much enjoyed your idea here...I've used it with my new moleskine plain pocket journals! Thanks a lot for the idea!!!