ThePeteHacks: Kindle 2 Handmade Book Cover

So, after a few months of owning a Kindle 2, I noticed that it was getting a little scuffed up, even though I was wrapping it in a bandanna whenever I’d toss it into my bag to bring it somewhere.  So, I decided it needed a cover.  I did some browsing on Amazon and quickly discovered that every K2 cover seemed overpriced to me.  So, I did what any self-respecting hacker/customizer/DIYer would do and that’s hack together a perfectly reasonable cover from stuff I had laying around.

I also loved the idea of making my Kindle 2 look more like a high school text book than a high tech e-book reader, so I decided it should be made, mostly, from a grocery bag.  However, that brown paper feels pretty abrasive to me, so I used a couple of thin sheets of foam I had left over from an unboxing of another cool gadget and added them to the mix.

Have a look at the pics:



Obviously, I added some stickers to dress it up a bit.  I had planned to make it look even more high-schooly by drawing on it.  But since I’ve decided to give my Kindle 2 to my mom thanks to never using it, myself, (I have too many paperbacks I have yet to read and they take precedence), I’ll be leaving it up to my mom to take the design further if she wants to.



Yep that’s a paperclip that is slipped through a slit in the brown paper cover, itself, so it is never loose (or loseable).  The “rope” (paper strand) is just a long, thick strip of brown paper folded in half and then held that way with celo tape (I think I used the glossy Scotch tape because it sticks to the paper better than the transparent kind). The “DISOBEY” sticker comes from fellow-Flickrer Andres Musta. He’s a great artist. Check his stuff out.

Here’s a close up of the edge flap:



And here’s with the edge flap folded back after untying the paper strand:



Here’s the cover open with the Kindle 2’s screen, nav buttons and keyboard exposed:



You can see the foam sheet I folded over and cut so that the screen and keyboard would not have bare grocery-bag-paper rubbing against them when the Kindle 2 was in my bag.  I think I folded the foam over twice. Here’s a closer shot of the foam:



Here you can see another type of foam sheeting I used to wrap the Kindle 2 in before slipping it into the brown paper cover:



Here’s the area of the thin foam sheet that I cut away to allow the power switch and the headphone jack to be accessible. It’s a little ghetto looking, but it’s tough foam to cut neatly (or maybe my X-acto blade is finally getting dull?):



And here’s a shot of the exact opposite edge of the Kindle 2—the port for the USB cable and the tiny LED indicator that lights up when the K2 is plugged in:



And here is a shot of the empty brown-paper-case.  You can see that I used a Trader Joe’s grocery bag for the project :) and you can see where the paper strand is attached to the cover:



Finally, here’s a close up of the paper strand—I cut two slits, slipped the strand through and then taped it up.



I was pretty happy with how it worked out. So much so that I also made a similar cover for my eee PC 4g netbook.  I’ll have to post pics of that at some point.