Mini Leather Journal | Handmade Vintage Travel Notebook

Five inches of full-grain leather with 180 unlined kraft pages inside, which is a great many pages for a book this size. Soft rather than stiff, so it goes flat in a pocket instead of fighting you.

Full-grain is the top layer of the hide with nothing sanded off it, which is why it shows every mark and why it develops a patina rather than simply wearing out. Sanded and corrected leather has had its pores sealed, so it ages far more slowly. Worth knowing when you are comparing two journals that both say leather on the label.

What You Are Getting

5 inches. Full-grain leather, 180 unlined kraft pages that take ink, pencil and light wash without bleeding. Artisan-bound with traditional techniques, so each one differs.

Good to Know

Leather is a hide, so every cover takes the grain and the dye differently and no two are the same. Marks and creases are not faults in a journal like this; they are the reason it looks the way it does in a year. A brass clasp stiffens for the first few weeks and then settles.

Kraft paper is warm-toned rather than white, which suits pencil and ink and does something unhelpful to pale watercolor. Worth knowing before you buy it to paint in.

Use It For

Travel, meetings, outdoor writing, or a daily carry. The page count is the argument here: it will last most people a year.

Pair It With

The 5 by 3 evil eye mini if you want a clasp, or the 9 by 6 Embossed Stone Diary for a desk. Something to write with: the Quill Pen and Stand in Sparkling Gray or Lavender Gold. To close a page or a letter, Wicca Sealing Wax. More in journals.