How Can I Go From Tracing Or Vellum Paper To Leather?

[Jack55]

Hi, I'm very new to the site and the craft.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to get a design from a piece of tracing paper or vellum paper onto a piece of leather.

Feel free to throw me any suggestions or advice.

~Jack55

[Thor]

First, welcome to the forum!

Second it really depends what you're trying to do. What kind of leather are you talking about? Veg tanned, chrome tanned, garment leather...

In case you are talking about carving, please refer to the individual section on this board. The leather has to be cased and you transfer the design with a stylus pen or such. There are silver pens as well for transferring. Are we talking about some sort of garment leather, then a pricking wheel would be the tool of choice...

So you see, you should tell us what you are actually planning to do.

[TwinOaks]

My preference is tracing with a pencil, then transferring by 'chasing' the lines with a ball point pen. It rolls smoothly on the paper, and the ink stands out from the pencil enough that you can see anywhere you might have missed when tracing the pencil lines.

[Colt W Knight]

I trace over the drawing with a stylus, and in fine picture carvings, I use the point of my modeling spoon.

[jfdavis58]

I do most of my designing on either ordinary 20# white paper or drafting vellum. I move the design/paper to a light table. If it's a tooling design i lay a piece of tracing plastic from tandy (or similar) and transfer the design with a fine point sharpie marker. If its a cutting pattern I use quilters template plastic and transfer the design with the same sharpie marker. To move a tooling patternto the leather I use a fine point stylus; to move a cutting pattern I first cut the template plastic to shape/size then use either a fabric marking pencil or one of those leather marking pens several places offer. In review: paper to plastic to leather. Pencil, sharpie, stylus or fabric marking device.