The making of my new Van der Spek custom Nomad traveller's notebook

I feel like the absolute first thing I must tell you about this post is that is it very photo heavy!  The lovely Petra from Van der Spek took lots of photos of my custom Nomad being made and a short video too and I wanted to share them all with you so you can see the work and craftsmanship that goes into their products.  Because there are so many photos I am spitting my story into two posts, this first one will show you my Nomad being made and the second post will be about when it arrived, how I am setting it up and what I will be using it for.  Ok lets begin....

After I brought my Van der Spek organiser last year I fell in love with it completely.  I have used it non-stop for the past seven months and since then I haven't brought any new planners or binders.  I don't feel the urge to swap between my organisers any more, I'm sticking with the VDS and it's amazing large rings.  However when I ordered my leather samples to help me decide which would be best for my custom organiser I did have a hard time choosing the ones I would use.  I really liked the Janet leather and I had a soft spot for the undyed leather too as I thought it might be fun to see how it changed with use and age.  I was also hooked on the whole Van der Spek experience, it was great to be able to design my own product and their customer service is wonderful.  So in January I had my Christmas money, my Van der Spek leather samples and the urge to buy something else off them but not another organiser because I already had the perfect one.  I went on their website and took a look around when I came across their Nomad covers.  I have always loved traveller's notebooks, I even made my own mini one using a Kate Spade passport cover but I have never owned a "proper" one.  I thought about it for a while before deciding to take the plunge.

Here come the photos!

JP cutting out the pieces of leather for my cover -

104 Janet leather for the outside and

102 undyed for the inside

All of the components ready to be sewn together

I went with contrasting stitching again

Awaiting assembly

Making the card slots and pockets I ordered

Such care is taken even with the smallest of details

Adding the pen loop

 

Three card slots and the larger pockets

Adding the internal layout to the external cover

Joining the two together

Adding the holes for the elastics

Isn't the Janet leather a gorgeous colour?

Attaching the rivets

Are you ready to see the final product?

My custom layout inside, card slots and pockets on the left

and a pen loop on the right

The front cover

You can see how well the two colours go

together here, I love them!

This is the video Petra shot for me of the card slots and pockets being made...

I am so pleased with how my Nomad cover turned out, I will post the second part of this story as soon as I can.  I hope you have enjoyed my little peek behind the scenes at Van der Spek!


*Disclaimer - all photos and the video in this post were taken by Petra Van der Spek*