My First Project!

[CarvedOn]

I took a basic leather class at a Tandy leather store in Phoenix and this is my first project. I have gotten 6 wallet orders from this project! Thanks for taking a look.

[Hilly]

Very nice! Your father will love it.

Wish my first project came out looking that good.

[CarvedOn]

If anyone would like to leave critiques I would love to hear it. I want to get better at doing leather tooling, carving and stitching. I have done drawing and painting types of artwork, but am a beginner at this. Love doing it. Thanks.

Here is one of the designs for a wallet that I drew myself and carved it on the wallet that was a special order. They wanted two horses facing each other. That swivel knife is a difficult thing to master. I think the thing just tries to take over!

On this wallet I discovered gold cova paint. I watered it down a bit and it gave the horses a gold sheen. I love horses, so this was fun.

[Talfuchre]

I think that wallet is nice - certainly nice for a first attempt.

The fact that your first was given to your dad is ALWAYS cool.

TF

[jeeperaz]

Looks great.

What Tandy store did you go to? I'm looking at taking class there just to get some basics... I live somewhat close to the one off I17 & Bell.

[electrathon]

Teh biggest beginning learning tip I can give you is to find some scrap and tool the same pattern 4 times. You will definatly be able to see your pregression as you become more stable at cutting and things start to smooth out with your tooling.

Knife cuts should be about 1/2 way through the leather. The thicker the leather, the deeper you and cut and tool.

Keep your background all about the same depth. The driven down area should be consistant. Buy an extra tool and grind it smaller. The craft tools are oversized. You need to be able to get all the way into small areas.

[CarvedOn]

Wow Electrathon, thanks for the advice. I will try that. I can already see some improvement since I took the class to now. I tried to get the smallest tools I could and they still were big for what I want to achieve. I will get and extra background tool and grind it. Thanks to the rest of you for the comments and encouragement.

Jeeperaz, that's the store where I took the basic class. Sara is a great teacher, she will share all kinds of wonderful things with you. Tell her she was recommended on this site by a member that took her class, she will get a charge out of that!

I am going to tackle a purse for my mom.

[CarvedOn]

Here is another one of the wallets done. It's a trifold with a pirate ship battle that I drew myself. I put just a bit of cova paint on the sails. It was for a Father's Day request. I am left handed and I thought my index finger was going to fall off after I cut all this! I'd go back and do it all over again because it is so fun to see the design come to life.