Grey Drakkon

Beautiful work, and damn that's sparkly! I bet there's some western horse shows that would have people clamoring for that belt.

Your first bag was really nice, but this one blows it out of the water. The copper adds to the overall warmth of it, and the white stitching (love the thickness of it, by the way, well worth it being a pain) makes it really pop.

Neat! I take it the silver swirls are paint of some sort? They're very subtle in the photos, which is good since it's a pretty busy piece with all the rivets and such. I see what Alvetjarn is talking about, in the second photo you can see a hole where a rivet should be right next to the bottom most strap.

Wow! That's sure an attention grabber! Great job on incorporating so many different textures and colors.

Bad jokes, you say? I'd like in.

A good word for someone like that is "twit". Actually I can think of way more, but it might get me booted. My sister's mother in law is just like that guy, and tries to get away with lying about the stupidest stuff. She of course backpedals if it turns out you actually know something about the subject that she's hijacking.

If you're talking about the decoration along the inside, I actually used an edge groover. :x In retrospect, I should have just carved it with a knife but I didn't realize how difficult it would be when I started, and by then I had committed. Next time I'll definitely be using a sharp knife instead of the groover.

Any one of the riders I know would be thrilled to have a saddle like that. Beautiful work! I'd love to see it in action with a breast collar as well.

That's pretty awesome looking, but I agree that the shiny gears on the owl's breast are kind of jarring. Is there a way you can add a patina to them?

This was my first attempt at an arm guard. Solofalcon's work in particular was an inspiration to make me jump in and give it a shot (hurr). The other inspiration was necessity. I managed to get my hands on a Palomino recurve bow and since I want to actually use it, I needed some arm protection. I had snapped my arm badly in the past and I didn't want a repeat of it, so a full guard was called for. I kinda fumbled along, and since I knew I'd screw it up I wasn't too concerned when I encountered difficulties and flubbed a few things. The pattern on it is definitely not a mirror image, and when grooving it out I encountered different textures within the leather that made it carve unevenly. I figured that made for good practice though, so I just went with it. First pic shows the guard before staining and finishing the edges. Last couple are action shots with me using it. I did manage to give my arm a light snap once when target shooting, and it did a great job of blocking it. Next guard I make will be darker to match my bow, and I'll probably leave off of the cluster of decoration at the bend of the elbow, since it looks like that area will see a lot of strain and will probably muck any decoration up. I was pretty pleased with how the lacing worked, it was easy to put on and tighten (I cannibalized a sliding draw string thing from a backpack I think) and it stayed put without making my arm suffocate. My stitching is atrocious, but the leather will rip before those suckers come loose at least.

Just a guess, but a couple of reasons I could think of assembling it all is: 1. Expediency. If You're using an airbrush, those hard to reach spots aren't really that hard to reach, and having to prep everything just once instead of over and over as each part is done saves a lot of time. 2. Consistency. It's a bit easier to match everything when you're doing it all at once. Of course, I could be way off.

That's beautiful work, and dying the inside of the dark pieces made it even better.

That hat is one hell of a statement. That's not a hat someone would wear and would get a "Oh, nice hat." it would be "Holy crap look at that hat! Where did you get it?!" Possibly with more exclamation points.

I'm on my lunch break at work and my speakers don't work, so out of curiosity I clicked on the cc button to see if I could follow along. LOL if you want a real laugh try muting it and watching with the cc on and see if you can make sense of it, I lost it when it mentioned palastinian police and sushi. ;D I'll definitely re-watch them when I have the sound working.

I really like the border around the hummingbird, particularly how you treated the green. I see that you used acrylics, did you do anything to seal them afterwards since their surfaces will see use?

I know exactly what you mean with being given so much free rein that you almost don't know what to do. I own a small frame shop and I have recently had a customer that has gotten to the point that she drops off the artwork and says "Oh whatever you decide will be great I'm sure." o_o That shows a level of trust I'm a bit uncomfortable with, seeing as how I'm the suspicious sort. Thanks for the vote of confidence! I think I'll start with a leather tab, seems like it's harder for me to hurt myself or my wallet by starting simple and working on from there.

Gorgeous work, and you both inspire me and make me despair for the arm guard I'll be working on soon. I just found myself with a Palomino recurve bow on my hands and I want to properly deck myself out. (and protect myself...I remember snapping my arm in High School so badly it raised a huge welt). Thank you for sharing your work, even if it makes me envious.

I just realized I didn't cut around the edges of anything. That would explain why it was so hard to get foreground and background pushed away from each other. >_< Next one will be much better. Thanks for the compliment! I'm used to working small so it didn't bother me too much. Just needed decent lighting and properly sized tools.

The carnation is lovely, and I really like the flow of the train track and roses on the other strap. It makes you want to look at it twice.

Beautiful work, and nice horse!

Been a long time since I was last here. I had been wanting to get back to working with leather again, and Tandy's leather trading card contest was enough to give me the kick needed. This is my first leather trading card, it's 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" on 2-3 oz vegetable tanned leather. I did a little bit of tooling and stamping. It's painted with very watered down acrylics. I made some stamping errors (pounded too hard on the right hand seaweed's background) and I'm not entirely pleased with the colors, but I'm much happier with them than I was before I put the black outline around it. In retrospect, I probably should have used a very dark brown instead of black. Still, not too shabby for a fiddly little thing.

Oh man that's just awful! A tip, if you have a small item and want to dry it off, use a hair dryer. I have a really old one that's worthless for hair since it's so weak, but that makes it perfect for drying and curing leather while I'm there watching it. The stupidest thing I've done with leather is have purple dye close to it...And it was a leaky bottle. >_<

Welcome! I'm new here too, and also kicking myself for not finding this place sooner, there's SO MUCH information here!

No problem, I'll put them up in the critique area, I'll toss in the tutorial too just to see everyone's opinion on how it reads.

I'm a rank amateur when it comes to leatherworking, especially compared to what I've seen on this forum. My real introduction to it was when I bought "The Leatherworking Handbook" by Valerie Michael, which had good descriptions of vegetable tanned leather, how it acts, what the weights are, and some projects of varying difficulty, including those that teach you how to do saddle stitching. I bought it because I wanted to make a leather mask, and I did. So I made another, and another, and soon enough I was getting questions on how I make my masks, so I made a tutorial on how I make them. ;D I lease a horse and I stumbled on this forum by trying to find a leatherworking book for tack. I'm hoping to make a simple bridle first, or maybe just a browband and move on from there. If nothing else, it would be handy to be able to make simple repairs to saddles, or at least know if something is able to be repaired or not. My beginning efforts at stamping have been pretty pathetic, but I was flailing out on my own with probably half the tools that I needed. I'll probably post them so everyone can have a laugh. I'm an artsy kind of person, and I like mixing things up. I've dabbled in calligraphy, polymer clay, ceramics, jewelery work, and of course leatherworking. I have a deviant art site that has a mix of all of these things, some of which were from years ago and I'm mildly embarrassed to have up now. Ah well, if I hadn't improved in that time, I'd be worried.