Hello, strange new community of artisans and hobbyists!

I've been brought to your community through some hours of searching for profitable crafting ventures to embark upon with my leftover materials from a recent renaissance faire costume. Of course, being the purist that I am (perhaps a bit of a perfectionist as well), I just had to make sure that the armor for my costume was actually armor, and not... well, a costume; this has left me with quite the expensive pile of 9oz tooling leather, pigskin suede, rabbit furs, waxed thread, rivets, blockout, dye, finish, weatherproofing, etc.

So here I am, trying to fill in my spare time making my money back. Currently I need to make about $300 to match expenses, and I only have about 20% of my materials left over. Short of selling the actual armor peices I made (could probably make $300 on them alone, if only I had a will to sell them), I can only think to make some common leathercraft items out of my premium materials and sell them for a pretty penny. I, of course, understand that this means a quality production and not just quality materials, and, of course, I understand that my armor was indeed the very first leathercraft project I have ever attempted. That said, I feel I did a good job, and that my experience in other crafts combined with my innate perfectionism will allow me to make a fine product worth a sale.

I do, of course, have one problem... I have no idea what to make. Of all the bows, bullroarers, slings, digeridoos (geez, never realized how big a hippy I am), electronic gadgets (that's better), flash games, websites, and etc. that I have made in my life, I have never once tried to make money on any of it. So it suffices to say that I am a level 0 newbie at selling things or business in general. And there enlies the reason for this blog...

I will be posting images of my materials and past projects to begin with, and perhaps keeping my new projects logged here as a receptacle for criticism and advice. Enjoy!