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I discovered the designer Olympia Le-Tan recently while browsing the design world and instantly became obsessed with her amazingly quirky and stylish handbags, in particular her beautiful embroidered book clutch bags. These guys can be spotted everywhere especially among celebrities at the moment making them incredibly on trend and being a lover of books and crafts myself I couldn’t help but feel like I needed a book bag in my life! Now unfortunately I don’t have $1,000 to spend on one for myself, or the time or experience to attempt to embroider something similar. So instead I have come up with this much simpler and much much cheaper solution!

I have found some examples of other DIY versions online, most of which involve you cutting down through the pages in the book to make the empty space, but this method did not appeal to me, mainly because it was destroying the book pages itself and I felt like it still didn’t give you enough room in the bag. So instead I have detached the cover from the book, leaving the pages completely intact.Which means you can still read the book if you like, or in my case, you have an entire book of pages to use for other art and crafting projects! So with all that in mind, lets begin.

I chose these beautiful leather bound versions we have in stock published by Barnes & Noble.

Along with your book of choice all you need is;

- 2 sheets of felt

- 1 pack of balsa wood

- a craft knife

- a ruler

- glue

- a clasp

- a screwdriver

1- Begin by getting your craft knife and cutting carefully along the spine of the book, making sure not to cut the cover itself. Take your ruler and measure the three sides of your book. Then cut them out of your balsa wood

2- Put one sheet of felt aside. Take your second sheet and lay the longer piece of balsa wood on it. Leaving about an inch space on one side, cut the felt around it. Cut the remainder in half.

3- Glue the balsa wood onto the felt as shown.

4- Cut the felt in a diagonal line on the two side pieces as shown, making a alight slit in the felt as well.

5- Take one of the side pieces and glue the bottom of the balsa wood and inch of felt to the base of your book. Then glue the back piece of felt to the book. Repeat this for the other side. Then glue your front piece of balsa wood and felt into the remaining slot.

6- Take your full sheet of felt and glue it onto the base of the book and over onto the front cover as well as shown.

7- Then all that’s left to do is to take your clasp and screw it onto the balsa wood and into the front cover and there you have it, a super quick and effective book clutch!

Bear in mind of course that things may vary slightly depending on the depth of your book but as long as you measure everything properly you shouldn’t have any trouble! Since I already had some of the items like glue, craft knife, ruler etc at home I managed to make this bag for only €25 (book: €18.70, felt: 0.75c each, balsa wood:€3.99, clasp 0.50c) and not only do I have book pages for future crafts but I also have loads of balsa wood left over, even after two bags, for other projects!

You can buy all the craft supplies you need to make this clutch on our online shop!