Some unusual Van Der Spek custom designs

Van Der Spek is a small family-owned and run company with a factory in Puttershoek in the Netherlands. They do make off the shelf binders but the majority of us who love them, love them for their custom design. You can choose:

• between ringed organiser, Hobonichi cover, Traveler’s Notebook cover, notebook and writing case
• your leather from almost 60 different options with more coming all the time
• the colour or colours of your stitching
• your ring size
• your ring colour
• hardware colour
• ring protectors or not
• full length back wallet pocket or not
• your internal layout and pocket constellation
• a flyleaf with or without zip and/or pockets
• double pen loops
• stiffener, thin stiffener or no stiffener
• embossing, either with colour, or blind embossing
• a pen case to match your binder

If you are really inventive, the sky is the limit. If not you can do what I do and look in the Facebook group at all the designs others have made and adapt them for your own binder.

Here are some of the ingenious designs by some of our Van Der Spek group members

This pink ostrich is Susan’s and is designed to combine Midori notebooks and a regular ringed binder. Midori inserts fit into the side pockets with the rings in the middle. Extra height in the binder makes this possible. As you can see, Susan has a very practical interior design with secretarial pockets and lots of credit card slots. Susan also has a zipped leather flyleaf.

The next one is Christian’s and has an outside gold popper. This is yellow LV leather.

The next one belongs to James and has a Superman feel about it, in blue and red

and then we have Lora’s three beauties, with corner detailing and embossing.

and my tri-colour Nomad Traveler’s notebook cover in red, green and yellow LV leather

This is Lamia’s two tone beauty with a gorgeous stripe on the outside and two-tone detailing on the inside. It is made in Italian full grain leather. I have one made of the same type of leather which is 22 years old and it still looks as good as new.

These are two one of Jane’s tri-colour beauties. She really has an eye for colour and design, don’t you think? One of them has a beautiful quote blind embossed into the leather.

And here is Katherine’s very innovative pocket constellation.

And last, but by no means least, the gloriously (and accurately) named Touch Me leather (at the moment only in black and brown) is available for custom orders. It is the most spectacular buffalo leather. Below are Helen’s two claspless (another custom option) binders, with the Touch Me leather on the right and Bordeaux on the left

And here is a Touch Me custom leather binder with gold embossed initials, showing contrast stitching.