A natural vegetable-tanned leather bookmark with a tassel lying across an open book on a workbench.
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A Leather Bookmark

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

A strip of leather, a sharp knife, and an edge that has to be as clean as a briefcase flap.

A leather bookmark is about the smallest honest thing you can make from a hide: one strip of vegetable-tanned leather, cut straight, shaped at the ends, finished on the edges, and left to sit between paper for years. It costs almost nothing in leather. It costs the same attention as anything else, because a bookmark is all edge and no hiding place. I build briefcases, and I will tell you up front that what follows is the project from the people who make bookmarks, with my opinions marked as mine.

Video: DIY Hand-Tooled Leather Bookmarks | Leatherworking, from Morley Kert on YouTube.

That is Morley Kert hand-tooling a set of bookmarks. Below are the materials, then the steps in the order they happen, then the version I think is worth your time.

What a bookmark asks of the leather

Thin enough for a closed book, firm enough to stand up out of it.

Hands cutting a leather bookmark strip along a steel rule with a craft knife.

A bookmark lives in a closed book with the cover pressed down on it. That sets the thickness. Tandy’s Your Place Bookmarks are pre-cut natural vegetable-tanned strips, 8 inches long by 1.5 inches wide, in 4 to 5 oz leather, made to be stamped, dyed or painted. Tandy’s own weight chart puts 4 to 5 oz at 1.6 to 2.0 mm, and 3 to 4 oz at 1.2 to 1.6 mm.

Makers go thinner. In a Leatherworker.net thread of bookmark examples, CitizenKate says the leather should be fairly thin, around 3 to 4 oz. Another member, gtwister09, used 1.5 to 2 oz leather folded over the page with a flat magnet glued inside. Marching North’s bookmark tutorial uses 3 to 4 oz veg tan and gives the reason it has to be veg tan if you want to tool it: “You can’t tool chrome tan leather.”

My opinion: skip the bridle. The bridle I build with is thick and waxy by design, which is right for a case and wrong for something meant to lie flat between pages. A firm 3 to 5 oz tooling veg tan does the job.

And it is a job. The University of Kansas Libraries’ guide to care and handling of library materials tells readers to mark the place with a bookmark rather than bend page corners or use tape, sticky notes or paper clips. A dog-ear is a crease you can never iron out. A bookmark is the fix.

Materials and tools

Everything here is on most beginner benches already.

For the plain single-layer bookmark:

  • Vegetable-tanned tooling leather, 3 to 5 oz, or a pre-cut bookmark blank
  • A cardboard template, a steel rule and a sharp craft or utility knife
  • A self-healing mat to cut on
  • A sponge and water for casing
  • Leather stamps, a mallet or maul, and a granite slab or poundo board (optional)
  • An edge beveler, sandpaper and a wood slicker
  • A round hole punch for a tassel hole
  • Leather dye and a finisher (optional)
  • Leather lace or embroidery thread for a tassel

The stitched two-layer version needs more: a stitching groover, a stitching chisel or awl, contact cement, two harness needles and waxed thread.

Two more notes before you buy anything. Scrap counts. In a Leatherworker.net thread on cutting a hide, Handstitched says his off-cuts go to small items, bookmarks and belt keepers, and in the bookmark thread Fathers Son cuts blanks from old belts. On my bench the shoulder already goes to small parts, so a bookmark is a good home for a scrap of it.

Cut the strip and shape the ends

Straight sides, a clean end, and corners that do not snag a page.

Macro of a leather bookmark edge being burnished with a wooden slicker.

Make a template first. The Nature Outside bookmark project traces a cardboard template onto the leather and cuts it with an X-Acto or craft knife. Scoutermom’s bookmark guide marks a rectangle of about 2 by 6 inches with a ruler and suggests rounding the corners or cutting a point at the bottom. Neither is a rule. Tandy’s blank is longer and narrower. Pick a size that sticks out of the books you actually read.

Cut against a steel rule, not freehand. Axminster’s pyrography bookmark guide says to press down firmly on the rule so the leather does not stretch as the knife goes through. That same guide cuts a fringe straight into the leather instead of hanging a tassel: a line marked 25 mm from one end, then cuts 3 to 4 mm apart up to it.

Round the corners on the end that goes into the book. My opinion, nobody’s rule: a square corner is a little blade, and after a few hundred trips in and out of a book it will have scuffed a few pages to prove it.

Case it, then tool or stamp it

Damp, not wet. Hit once and do not let the hammer bounce.

Vegetable-tanned leather takes a stamp when it is damp, which leatherworkers call casing. Marching North says to dampen the area with cold water until it is “evenly moist but not soaked,” then let it rest about five minutes before working. My opinion on the extremes: too wet and the impression goes soft, like a boot print in mud, and too dry and the stamp barely bites.

Then the stamps. Axminster strikes the back of each one firmly and warns not to let the hammer bounce, because a bounce can print the image twice. It also says to test on scrap first, which is good advice for every step here. In my view the leather wants something hard under it that does not give, and a wobbly table soaks up the blow.

Burning a design in with a pyrography pen is another way. Axminster uses vegetable-tanned leather for that on purpose, because other tannages can give off toxic smoke when burned, and says to keep the power low since leather scorches at a lower heat than wood.

If you want lettering, Marching North says to use a large font for engraving. In the bookmark thread, gtwister09 calls small text tedious to tool by hand. Believe him.

Edges, color, and the pages it will touch

The edge is the whole project. The dye is a choice.

A stitched two-layer leather bookmark beside harness needles and waxed thread on a bench.

On a bookmark the edge is most of what you see, so give it the full treatment. The Nature Outside project bevels both pieces with a size 3 edge beveler, then sands and slicks the edges. My edges are hand-burnished, because it is the traditional finish and it holds. The site’s piece on hand burnishing covers that method on vegetable-tanned leather, and a bookmark edge takes it the same way a strap does.

Then color, or not. Dharma Trading’s painted bookmark tutorial dyes one side with a wool dauber in long even strokes, lets it dry, then does the other side, paints a design on top, and brushes on two or three coats of finisher. It warns that dye takes differently on different leathers, says to test first, and notes that dyeing both sides may stiffen the leather more than dyeing one.

Think about where this thing lives. It sits against paper. On my Leather Care page I say that light color transfer may happen at first until the dyes settle. That is about a briefcase rubbing a sleeve. A cream page is less forgiving than a sleeve. My opinion: leave a bookmark undyed, or seal the dye well and let it cure before it goes near a book.

Undyed is not boring, either. In my experience sun and the oil from your hands darken natural veg tan, and a bookmark gets handled every time the book opens. If it dries out, a little beef tallow or leather oil rubbed in and buffed off brings it back. Give it time and it starts to look like it has been somewhere.

The tassel, and why I would stitch two layers

The plain strip is quick. The stitched one teaches you a briefcase.

The tassel is the last piece. Marching North wraps yarn around a hand, ties it off with a strand, wraps the neck, trims it, and threads it through the bookmark’s hole with a lark’s head knot. Nature Outside uses a strand of leather lace. Either one goes through a small hole punched in the center of the top end.

So far, so easy. Scoutermom puts the plain version at about 25 to 35 minutes, and calls for an adult’s help with the knife. My case would normally end there. One strip, natural leather, a burnished edge, and done.

Now the turn.

The plain strip teaches you almost nothing you did not know when you started. The Nature Outside version does. Two pieces, a front and a back. A stitching groove cut into the damp front. Holes punched in the groove. Both pieces tooled, beveled, glued, then trimmed, sanded and slicked as one. The holes punched again through the front into the back, a saddle stitch run along the bottom third, then dye and a tassel. Steve, who wrote it, says to keep the groove far enough from the edge that you can still trim, and to trim the back piece rather than the front because the front carries the groove.

Read that list again. Glue, groove, punch, stitch, trim flush, finish the edge. That is the build order of a writing pad portfolio, and of a briefcase flap, at the size of a playing card. Mess it up and you have lost a scrap and an hour. Mess it up on a case and you have lost days.

So make the plain one first, for the edge. Then make the stitched one, and make it twice. A bookmark is a small thing to carry to a meeting with a notebook. It is a big thing to learn on.

Fiskars 18 x 24 Inch Self-Healing Cutting Mat: A self-healing cutting mat, 18 by 24 inches. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

12-Inch Stainless Steel Metal Ruler with Non-Slip Cork Backing: A 12-inch stainless steel ruler with a non-slip cork back. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Fiebing’s Gum Tragacanth, 4 oz: A 4 oz bottle of gum tragacanth, a burnishing aid for leather edges. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

DEEDYGO Genuine Bone Folder: A genuine bone folder for creasing and burnishing. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Jmuiiu 7-in-1 Adjustable Leather Groover: An adjustable stitching groover for cutting a channel along the stitch line. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Wet Dry Sandpaper Assortment, 45 Pieces: A 45-piece wet and dry sandpaper assortment that starts at 400 grit. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

30-Pack Wool Dauber Brushes with Metal Handles: A 30-pack of wool dauber brushes with metal handles for applying leather dye. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

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