Kobo Mini Cover

There have been a lot of things going on that have meant that I haven't been crafting for a while. When leatherworkers say that you have to use your skills often, they really mean it. I made a lot of errors in the tooling and stamping, mostly due to lack of practice. This cover was originally done using chrome tanned leather but it ended up too flimsy. I should have used a firmer matboard for the internal support. But since I liked the way the mini slipped into the case, I decided to do an outer cover with veg tan leather and use the previous cover as the insert. This was my first time with double lacing as well and I have to get better with the endings. Not perfect by any means but I still will get a lot of use out of it.

(For some reason the photos look weird. Please click on them to see them properly.)

Key tag

Just a little thing I made for my son-in-law using his logo. It was the first time I had done this type of carving. I found that the copic markers worked really well to colour the main figure and the edging.

Luggage tag

When I was planning to use the copics for colouring the leather on the purse flap, I decided to try it out on some scrap leather first. This was belly leather which is not the greatest but it was good enough to practice both the tooling and the colouring. I did learn a lot from this exercise. The tooling made it impossible to groove the stitching line and I should have cut around the patterns on the luggage tag opening more carefully. Actually things were not going too badly until I used the wrong tool to make the holes for stitching, as I was waiting for the correct ones to come. These holes are much too large and really detract from the tooling.

Even though the stitching aggravates me, I did use it when travelling a couple of weeks ago because I do like the tooling.

Hobo style purse

I have been playing with this in my mind for a long time and finally got it done. As a first one, there were many things that did not work as well as I hoped. But I can see a lot of improvements in my tooling and I learned a lot about the does and don'ts in construction. The flap sectioned tooled.

I am getting much better definition with my tooling. A lot of it has to do with getting some better bevellers from Northern Lights Leather Tools.

I hand painted the background using Golden Acrylic paints and air brush medium. I did get some of it on the leaf but it doesn't show after the leaf was coloured.

I coloured the flowers and leaves with Copic markers. This was a real learning experience as they behave a lot differently on leather than on smooth cardstock.

Then I antiqued with a dark brown hilite stain to pull it all together.

This wasn't the best fabric for the liner as it is a cotton, but I loved the print. I can always replace it if it wears out.

The blue leather I bought at Tandy leather on sale. I'm not sure that is shows in the pictures but it isn't navy and isn't royal blue, but somewhere in between. A really pretty colour with denim.

More views.

Leather watch band

I have been playing with leather these days. Just learning of course and things are still really rough but I thought I would share the watch band I made using scraps. I did a lot of things wrong so this was a great learning experience but I am pleased that the end result is wearable.