My suggestion, if you're not going to go the newspaper route, would be to go to Hobby Lobby or Michael's and get a 1.5" wide leather belt blank. You may or may not need to treat it with neatsfoot oil. From that point, REEEEALLY practice your x-strokes. The good thing about this, though, is that since you have a longer surface to strop on you can take your time on your x-strokes and make sure you hit the entire edge.

For a "linen" component, you may want to take a look in the wiki here on how to make one out of an old pair of jeans.

With those two things, you could cobble one together pretty easily.