Adventures in Making a Secret E-Reader Case Part 2

As you all may remember, I left off my harrowing tale of craftiness last week in my Adventure of the Great Kindle Case.  Not exactly what I called it, but you know what I mean.  Anyhow, I'd had an idea to turn an old book into a new Kindle case.  With some gluing and cutting I at last had a hollow book.  And then I took the weekend off.  So, Monday morning I had a sudden thought:  how in the world am I going to turn the thing on?  Because you see, my friends, the sad thing about technology is that it requires power and stuff, and the switch for my Kindle is on the bottom, which meant that I'd have to remove the Kindle from the book every time I wanted to switch it on.  I couldn't have that.

So, I decided I'd chop a hole in the bottom of the book where the power button is, so I could just poke the button through the opening.  Sounds like a good idea, but let me tell you, Elmer's Glue is a beast.  I don't know much about slang talk, and I'm not sure I used the word "beast" correctly, but seriously, that stuff works.  So I had to spend quite some time sawing before I got the hole the way I wanted it to be.  Exhibit A below shows my serrated kitchen knife standing of its own accord in the book.  Allow me to say: not the most fun part of this project.  I kept on stabbing the wrong part of the page, and it was just really inconvenient.  But anyhow, finally, I finished.

 So at this point I had a hole cut out for the Kindle, a hole cut out for easy access to the power button, and... not much else.  This was when I started to realize that, since the hole fit the Kindle and the Kindle Only, there would be no easy way for me to remove the Kindle once it was in.

I really think things through.

After some careful thought, and much pacing around the house, seeking out clever ideas, I finally decided that I would have to put something in the book

In our hallway with many bookcases my eyes lighted upon the sewing cabinet (yes, it makes SO much sense) and I thought that I could use a ribbon to put under the Kindle and thereby use it as leverage to get the Kindle out.  Much chopping later, both with my box cutter and kitchen knife, I had two cutsey holes in the which I was able to string the ribbon, as you can see below.
 

 

This was when I decided that much wear and tear would not be good for my Kindle if I were to keep taking it in and out with such alarming regularity, so I found an old t-shirt I was giving away and cut the back out, in order to use as lining.  No worries, it was a shirt I was never going to use anyhow.  I got it during my hooligan stage, and it said, "Smile.  It confuses people."  Obviously I have since repented of my ways and would no longer wear a shirt suggestion that smiling should only be done to confuse people.  My shirt of choice these days says "Rejoice.  Joy is a choice."  Ah, youth.  How I did you wrong.

Look!  I'm a shirt all cut up!  I feel so rejected.

 As you can see, I carefully made sure the shirt fit into the hole.  It did.

From there it was fairly simple.  I glued my shirt into the space, glued some more pages on top of what I'd been working on so as to make it look neat and fresh, let it dry, and then put the ribbon through my carefully cut holes.  As you can see, my work space just kept getting messier and messier.

When all was said and done I realized that not only does it look sweetly awesome, but, thanks to the hole in the bottom, I can plug in headphones (pictured here) or plug in the charger (not pictured here, but it's HILARIOUS to see a book "plugged in," let me say).  So actually, that worked out remarkably well.

Ooh, another cool thing was that the book came with a bookmark, which I preserved from being glued, and so now the first few pages (which I kept in the book un-glued, just for good measure) have a book mark.  It honestly looks just like a regular book, only, well, you know, there are headphones coming out of it in this picture!

 

And here I am, turning the page in my book-within-a-book.

Anyhow, I hope this didn't bore you guys, but I was so excited that it worked out, I just had to share.  It's always exciting to do projects that actually turn out.  Maybe you folks do better than I, but honestly, I usually have these dreams (I'm making a purse!  I'm fixing my quilt!) and then they sort of just... flop.  So it was very exciting to have this work.

So.  That's all.