Grey Drakkon

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For those of you looking for places to show off your wares, have you looked into your local SCA chapters? SCA stands for "Society of Creative Anachronism", which is basically historical re-enactment from medieval times. I think pretty much every state has several events in it a year, and they almost always have vendors. If your leatherworking LOOKS like it could fit in with older stuff (and tooling has been around a loooooong time) then you'd probably be able to get away with your stuff there, although it would be a good idea to talk to someone involved and show them some pictures of your wares. Things like chairs would probably sell really well, especially if they're lightweight and transportable. Things like pouches that conceal tablets/phones would also do well. And I can tell you that there are VERY few vendor tables that would be unreasonably priced. Of course, it's a good idea to go to some of your local SCA meetings to see what's what before just diving in, and some may have rules that you have to be a member to be a vendor. Just thought I'd throw that out there as an unexplored venue that some may not have thought of. Also Dan, NICE setup! Very inviting looking.

I'm with Bikermutt in that I'd love to see a bit more contrast with the bird from the background behind it, because it's BEAUTIFUL! It really deserves to pop out, and the rest of the dying looks great too! As for the stitching ::cough:: well, it's better than what I did for my bag, but that's not saying much, sadly. At the rate you're going I'm sure you'll have it mastered in short order.

Super nice lines on that piece, not only with the tooling but the edges of the bag itself.

That is gorgeous!

For that one, I'd probably print out that version, then trace over it but only the major lines and maybe the scales, all the fiddly stuff could be tooled in later. Apparently that dragon was in a book from the 1800's so it's fair game.

Nice job, especially for your first corset! One quibble, I'd either switch that chain out for a copper or brass one, or add more silver to the corset elsewhere. Right now it doesn't fit the color scheme. Like I said though, looks really nice!

Would something like this work:

I do rather like how the green goes with the orange tone of the leather, myself. I learned something in any case, which is always a good thing. Haha yep, NorthStar Leather with his "scraps" which are big enough to make bags out of! And yeah, ::cough:: I need to use a fair bit more of it up, I'm literally tripping over the stuff. I need a house just so I have room for my leather! And hey, the guy the bag is going to is a luddite kinda guy that likes stuff not worked to within an inch of its life, so the rough/odd shape works for him. Aw crap, he's taking it back with him to Vancouver, the hipsters will steal it for sure! ;D

So a friend of mine got his bag stolen so I told him I'd make him one. This is my first attempt at a bag, I'll admit I hadn't thought about how to handle the corners. I have a lovely maul that I forgot at work so I did all the hole pricking with a crappy rubber hammer, hence the junk job with the stitching. Hey, at least it's solid! I know I didn't do the leather justice, but I had fun with it. Oh, and I kinda feel like a jerk for making theblacing and edging green, since my friend is red/green colorblind. >;)

Bikermutt, you took my suggestion right out of my head! You could rivet those pieces on top of the thicker leather to give some really nice layers, you could probably get away with using a bit thinner leather for the base if you did that too.

Wow, way to jump in with showing off. ;D I gotta say, everything's pretty rivet-heavy but in the case of the herbalist bag is ends up as a pattern and looks pretty nice, also good job with matching the rivet color and latch for the bag. The saddlebag nearly looks like a mini-chest, I like it.

If you have an airbrush, it should be pretty simple to just use white acrylic paint. You might have to do a few coats, but it should hold up for at least one weekend's worth of use. I've painted the edges of veg. tanned bracelets before and they've held up quite well.

You never know! Sometimes people make miniature saddles for toy horses and the like, very small pieces of leather would be ideal, or maybe for collages where the leather is glued down on an illustration.

Try contacting your local girl/boyscouts, or go on craigslist/facebook and say you're looking for teachers who want the scraps for crafts, or ANYONE who wants them for various crafts! Or are you talking REALLY small, like less than an inch?

Depends on what kind of boots you're talking about. Are you going for medieval/SCA kind of stuff? Then you should just be using hand tools anyway, although you may want to restrict when you're pounding leather since I'm sure the other apartment dwellers wouldn't be too thrilled with a maul whacking tools in the middle of the night. Check out the area on reenactment in the forums here and you'll see links to tutorials, or do a search in that thread for them.

I'm kind of baffled at skulls being painted as this horrible thing, maybe because I have an art background and like others have pointed out, skulls have been used symbolically through the ages for all sorts of reasons. I'm also with Druid, if I was the sort to get offended at everything, I'd be offended by the pushing of people's personal religions. I'm a big fan of "No religion, no politics" as a discussion topic in forums like these since both tend to turn people into flaming rage monsters. As for swearing, rules are rules, and the rules say keep it to the adult section. Simple enough. (Um, but now that I think of it, where ARE the rules? Just took a quick look around and couldn't find them anywhere.)

So Windrider's posts on making boxes lit a fire under me, since they coincided with me fiddling around with something at work. When cutting moulding on a miter saw, you end up with triangle shapes. If you get four of them and put them back to back, the rabbet of the moulding ends up pointed out and makes a snazzy lid! This is my first attempt, I happened to have some burgundy latigo scrap and one of the lids that went nice with that color, so I went at it. I'm frankly astounded that it turned out as well as it did, since I completely guessed at the height/angle of the curve for the sides. I cut the edges at an angle (which was a challenge) and saddle stitched them together, then burnished all the edges. The lid pops right in but not so snug that it's a pain to get on and off. Size is 2 1/2" x 2 1/2" by 2" tall.

Slick! I know plenty of people who would be all over that.

Huh. This gave me an idea to try out. I work at a frame shop and have access to an oval hole mat cutter. It's adjustable to make ovals/circles, but with a 45 degree beveled edge. I probably could figure out a way to cut straight edges with it too, I'm going to experiment a bit with it.

As always, super neat!

Kiwi, it's "simple", in that it's always an over/under pattern.

Because CELTIC KNOTS. Funny, looks like we have an East Coast, Central, and West Coast SCA member each posting here now.

Very envious of your home and especially the workshop! I'd still lose anything I put down for "just a second" but at least it would be lost amongst all the leatherworking stuff.

Nice work, and welcome to Leatherworker!