After seeing so many Louise Carmen leather journals around on the stationery internet recently, I’ve really been yearning for a trifold leather notebook cover. However, Louise Carmen are quite expensive, even for leather products, and given the issues I’ve been hearing recently about quality control, I decided to look elsewhere.

Which is how I stumbled upon an Etsy shop called HandStitchedLeatherT, that sells their own, handmade leather journals with lots of customisation options available. As with Louise Carmen you can get engravings and custom charms and elastic colours, but they also offer a range of sizes from Passport to A4 and have more than 30 different colours and styles of leather to choose from. 

I chose a B6 size journal in the Barbie colour leather (this beautiful pastel pink!), the mint colour elastic and a large rose quartz charm. As a custom made item, shipping from Slovenia to the UK, it did take a little while to arrive, but it was well within their shipping estimates on Etsy, and was absolutely worth the wait! 

It’s incredibly good quality, especially for the price, and because of the various customisations, it feels very ‘me’. As much as I love my neutral toned Traveler’s Company notebooks, I tend to veer towards bright and/or pastel colours in my stationery buying a lot of the time, so this is more my style.

The leather is a little thinner than the Traveler’s Company notebooks, but is still quite stiff, making it hold the journal’s structure nicely. However, it’s soft enough to bend easily, which is ideal to keep the trifold flap out of your way when writing in the journal. 

I’m not sure how the other leathers in this shop vary, but this is quite a smooth leather, rather than the suede style of some of the Traveler’s Company notebooks. So I’m not sure if it’s likely to patina or not over time, as I’ve now had it a few weeks and it looks good as new (although admittedly, it hasn’t really left my desk). I generally quite like leather that patinas, but in this case I don’t mind too much if it doesn’t, since I like the vibrancy of the colour. 

It comes with 4 elastics on the inside, and so I’ve jam-packed it full of notebooks, and am probably overfacing it (and the poor elastics!) with the size of notebooks I’ve put in. 

The top notebook is a B6 MUJI notebook.

Beneath that I have this random Pokemon notebook that came as a freebie in a Pokemon TCG box a while ago.

I then have an insert from another Etsy shop – Elrohir Leather – with this lovely dotted lilac paper in.

And at the bottom I have a B6 Stalogy notebook. 

I put the two thicker notebooks at the front and back, as I felt this would help with the slimmer notebooks in the middle lying flat. I did worry with this many notebooks in that it could end up being uncomfortable to write in some of them, but I haven’t had any problems so far, having written in all but one of them (the purple one). I think with TNs it’s all about getting the right configuration, and I think I’ve managed it here! 

I’ve so far been using this journal for writing and planning short stories and essays, and have assigned a different purpose to each: one notebook for ideas, one for short story drafts, one for essay drafts, and the other for writing exercises and responding to writing prompts. 

I’ve been loving using it so far, and with the cheerful bright colours, I’ve just loved having it on my desk! This has definitely fulfilled my trifold leather journal dreams, and I’d highly recommended HandStitchedLeatherT if you’re looking to buy one!

So what do you think of trifold leather journals? Where is your favourite leather journal from, and what do you use it for?