Laced Cat Face Purse

[Grey Drakkon]

So I have a friend visiting and I need to figure out something I can make quickly that is still nice that she'll like. I come up with the idea of a small clutch or coin purse in the shape of a cat's face. I look around on the internet a bit for ideas and am not really seeing anything, so I do a few sketches and land on this one. Actually the sketch wound up being a frankenstein-like cat purse, but it seemed that everything was fighting me so I went simpler. For one thing, I couldn't find any rivets that were short enough for only one layer of leather.

I'm not thrilled about the giant snap in the middle of the forehead, especially without the small rivets along the top to distract from it, but at least it's dark so it's not too noticeable from a distance. The lacing was another thing that gave me fits. I had gotten some of it completed when the lacing snapped, it was simply too old and had become brittle. I had already poked slits all around the edge though, so what can I do but lace? So I grab one of my longer pieces of Horween, a straight edge ruler, and a rotary cutter and try to make a consistent piece of lace and am moderately successful. It's much too thick to pull through the lacing slots though, and I'm not confident of my ability to skive the entire thing down. So I punch holes where the slits are and get lacing. You know something about thicker lace? It takes up more material. I was THREE HOLES SHORT. In retrospect, I probably could have pounded the lace to flatten it out more and add length before I started lacing, but hindsight and all that. So I cut a little more lace and splice it in. I think it turned out alright despite myself. Oh, and I probably should have used contrasting thread for the mouth, but I was really crunched for time at that point so shallow taps with the lacing nail and I called it acceptable.

[Bonecross]

Hehe cute! I think he's winking at me...