A laptop sleeve is a protective cover for a laptop. It is usually constructed of a thin durable material and fits snugly over the laptop. A sleeve not only keeps your laptop safe when it’s in a backpack but also allows you to carry it openly, without having to worry about dust and water affecting it.

While laptop sleeves are useful and some would say even essential, they don’t come cheap. Basic sleeves start from 30$ and special ones can go up to 100$, depending on what you choose. So while a neoprene sleeve may cost 35$, a leather sleeve costs around 110$. Your laptop model and size also affects sleeve pricing, with sleeves for the MacBook Air being notoriously expensive.

While most folks would grudgingly pay for an expensive sleeve, there’s a whole group of people who decided it wasn’t worth it. Instead, these people build their own laptop sleeves, out of a variety of materials. The best part about this is that many of them post tutorials so even other people can do it.

For sleeve-building tutorials, Instructables is your best bet. The site has tutorials for building sleeves out of sweatshirts, wetsuits, jeans, Fedex envelopes, binders, etc. One of my favorites was a quirky, reversible ‘monster’ sleeve that would cost 65$ if you bought it from a store.

What’s good about these sleeves is that although they’re homemade, they’re fully functional and just as good as a store-bought one. Plus, you build them for a fraction of the original cost since most of the materials are things that are lying around in the home. An added bonus is that you can build two-three sleeves and switch between them if you get tired of using the same sleeve over and over.

Have you ever built your own laptop sleeve? How do you think a homemade sleeve holds up against a readymade one? What’s your favorite laptop sleeve material and why? Let me know in the comments.