A couple of home made covers for your eReader

Posted by Tony on February 19, 2010 | Filed under Accessories

I know that almost every eReader manufacturer can supply you with a cover for your eReader, and most of those I have seen have been tough, business like things, and are highly to be recommended, but they almost all suffer from being very dull, mostly made from leather or plastic pretending to be leather, and come in a range of wonderfully sombre colours – black, brown, grey and so on.

Attract thieves like bears to honey:

They also all look like they contain an expensive bit of electronic equipment, and are thus very attractive to thieves. Sitting happily on the terrace of your local Starbucks, enjoying a cup of good coffee, your eReader looks well worth stealing to your average street crook, who in some parts of the world are all too common – a case in point is Cebu City, in the Philippines where I live. I have known them to steal bags from under the table we were sitting at in a restaurant without us noticing the theft until we got up to leave.

A possible solution:

My wife, who has her own eReader has been pondering on these points and come up with a couple of rather neat, and fun solutions to them, and has asked me to post them for her, so here goes…….

Blue Peter…. Look out!

For those who live in Britain, this will all be highly reminiscent of Blue Peter, a very popular children’s TV program that always shows you how to make something using old plastic bottles and such like, so for them,…………… Here is one I made earlier………….

Simple fabric cover:

Materials needed:

Cheerful fabric of your choice
Needle and thread
eReader in its normal cover

The idea here is to simply make a loose cover for your eReader with the fabric you have chosen. It seems to me to be so obvious how to make this, that I don’t really need to write a step by step set of instructions here, if you can thread a needle you will be able to work out how to make this one by yourself I feel.

Once you have made it, your eReader will be personalised and very much more cheerful looking, and as an added bonus, not quite so obviously a piece of expensive electronic equipment.

Paper/card cover, recycling your favourite book’s cover:

Materials and tools needed:

Sharp craft knife
Book-binder’s tape (or similar strong fabric)
Glue to glue tape to cover
Your eReader in its cover
Cover from an old book, a bit larger all round than the cover for your eReader

How to make it:

Take the paper cover that you have found and lay it open on the table (see picture 1)
Lay your eReader in its own cover, open on the paper cover (see picture 2)
Fold paper cover flaps over your eReader as if you were placing the paper cover on it (see picture 3)
Now cut Book-binder’s tape to correct width and length to place along top and bottom of paper cover (see picture 4)
Glue the tape in place
When the glue is dry, close book, and it is done! (see picture 5)

Picture 1:

Picture 2:

Picture 3:

Picture 4:

Picture 5:

Should the cover you have chosen be too floppy, you could add a couple of pieces of stiff card to the inside of the cover to strengthen it of course.Now you have a something that when closed, looks like a perfectly normal book, and thus of no real interest to possible thieves, and as a small added bonus, it feels like a real book when you hold it – the lack of this feeling is something that a lot of people have given as a reason not to want anything to do with eReaders I have noticed.

Share with us:

If anyone of you gets carried away and actually makes one of these covers, please send us pictures of them, so that I can post them here for others to admire. You will of course be credited with the pictures and any pointers you have for making the covers.

Further, if anyone has any other ideas for making eReaders more attractive and personal, do let me know.