Xeranthe

Here's the trading card I got. Thanks again Dawn! I love it.

I got my trading card in the mail. It's gorgeous Dawn, thank you so much! I will try and get a picture and post it up as soon as I can.

I'd like to be included. ;-)

JL Sleather Thank you for your comments. The design is not mine. I'm trying to remember what search I did to find similar things and it escapes me at the moment. In looking for other ideas I've found that if you want to do this type of work that searching for chinese paper cuts gives you some pretty awesome things to try. Some of them are heavily detailed so it would require some playing in order to get something that would work well for carving. I think I'd like to play a little with the colour in future projects like this. All I did with this one was to antique it and then apply a couple of coats of tan kote to it. My first attempt at that whole process so I didn't know exactly how it was going to turn out. ;-) Now I can start experimenting a little more. As for the wrinkles - I'd love to say that I did it intentionally but it was pure fluke. I actually had to go back and take another look to see what you were referring to. LOL

Hi Everyone, I've finished off a couple of projects that I've been working on and thought I would share them. I have indentified a few areas that I need to continue working on but I would be interested in your comments. Have a great day.

Thank you all for your suggestions. Every little bit helps at this point! Have a great day!

Hi everyone, I just wanted to ask if any of you have a preferred method for doing backgrounding on your projects in order to achieve the most even background? Are there any tips and tricks that work for you? I have a couple of projects on the go that require significant amounts of backgrounding to be done so if there's something that will make it go better I would love to hear it. Thanks.

That is totally cool and looks very realistic from the pictures. I hope that he doesn't leave it around where someone may try to eat it! ;-)

Thank you so much for sharing these pictures. They provide lots of great ideas.

I tried the transfer method with dry leather and that doesn't seem to work at all. Probably because the laser has the heat involved. I didn't get an opportunity to try it with damp leather last night - that will be tonight's project. I'll keep you posted on what I discover.

I know that when I printed onto a transparency and experimented with tracing over the design with the ink side on the leather that the ink did transfer to the leather. I will give it a try using your method and see how it transfers doing it that way and let everyone know.

3M makes transparencies that are for use in regular photocopiers and laser printers. I have a laser printer at home and have printed onto the transparency without any problems.

I tend to look at patterns and find one that I would like to try and then it's finding the leather piece that it will fit on. I'm still in the practice stages so I'm not doing specific projects for anyone just yet. I'm hoping to get my quality of work to a place where I can do Christmas gifts for friends and family this year. I definitely have my work cut out for me!

Thank you for the info Deno. Much appreciated.

That is totally awesome to hear. I'm glad that you shared this with us. Warm fuzzies all around.

Hi, I have some Craftool stamping tools that I picked up that have just numbers on them rather than the letter/number combination that is common now. I was wondering if anyone has any idea approximately when these stamping tools were made and if they are going to be of better quality than the current stamping tools that are available at Tandy? Thanks, Xeranthe

How do you decide what weight of maul you need? I would like to purchase a maul but can probably only afford one at this time. What would be the best weight to get?