Craft Confessions | PASSPORT BOOK

Some of my posts for a while will be related to things I made for my trip to Thailand and Cambodia this spring with my husband and his classmates. Hopefully they're applicable for your traveling OR everyday needs!

When I travel internationally, I feel like I have so many things to keep track of like my passport, plane tickets, maps, credits cards/cash, ID cards, and so on. My wallet isn't really the perfect size or shape for all of these items, so I made myself a simple passport book for my many checkpoints through Asia.

My materials included a cheap hard cover notebook, grey vinyl, a heavy-duty sewing needle, scrap fabric (for the pockets), and later on I added in a binder clip.

First, I dissected the notebook and pulled out all the paper while maintaining the binding in the center. With the book open, I measured it's perimeter and cut out a piece of vinyl to those dimensions with a bit of wiggle room. I then measured the dimensions of one cover side and cut that out twice (with wiggle room again). I wanted to hold my passport on the right side, so I cut a slit up and down just a bit longer than my passport binding. On the left side, I wanted to hold cards, so I cut multiple strips on top of each other a bit longer than a credit card. To keep the cards in place, I measured a long piece of scrap cloth just wider than a card and as long as the number of cards I wanted to hold * 1.5 (it was really a lot of eye-balling, so you might have to test this out a bit on your own).

I stitched the scrap cloth in an accordion pattern onto the vinyl. I then stitched each pocket side onto the larger piece of vinyl. The pieces kind of moved around, so I trimmed off the excess to even things up. I flipped the hard book cover backwards, and slipped the vinyl sleeve onto it. In addition to the slit for a passport and cards, I could slip maps into the space between the vinyl and book covers. The passport book was complete! However, when I got to Thailand, My Main Man wanted me to keep his passport and other papers with his, so we attached a binder clip to the left side. It turns out that it worked really well and holds plane tickets really well! Good thinking, MMM.