Moleskine / Notebook Elastic Hackery

As well as my PDA, I keep a notebook as well, so I can quickly scribble stuff down, draw little diagrams, reminders, anything. It’s quicker than the PDA, and can support more subtly shaded drawings (though I’m no artist). My girlfriend thinks this is all very pretentious, and so it is. But sod it eh?

At work, I keep an A4 daybook, with numbered (by me) pages, and drawn-in margins. These are provided by work. At home, I’m still forging my way through the selection of Moleskine notebooks I got for my birthday last year, and one of the features I like most is the elastic that keeps them closed. The work books don’t have this, so decided to add it.

Hardback notebook elastic hack

  1. Take a leather/paper punch. It has to be able to punch a clean hole in the hard cover of the book. I used a pliers-type leather punch, available from craft shops – I had one anyway, for some reason.
  2. Open the book at the back page.
  3. Punch a hole in the top right corner of the hard cover – about an inch from the top and an inch from the side.
  4. Punch another hole in the bottom right corner of the hard cover – about an inch from the bottom and an inch from the side.
  5. Take some cloth elastic – available from most craft shops, Woolworths, sewing shops, you know. Usually available in black and white. Take your pick.
  6. Thread the elastic out through the top right hole in the hard cover.
  7. Pull it over the top of the cover.
  8. Pull it down under the bottom of the cover.
  9. Pull it in through in through the bottom hole in the hard cover.
  10. Tie the two ends of elastic, so that the resulting loop will stretch over the closed notebook and hold it firmly shut.
  11. Trim excess elastic, and you’re done!

And when you’re finshed with that book, remove the elastic and reuse it. Or don’t.