Grey Drakkon

Nice! And I agree on the lettering, clever use of space while still making it legible.

Portraiture is TOUGH, even in traditional media. Accomplishing that in leather is no small feat! Great job!

Very tidy! And nice attention to detail with the ornamentation.

Huh, you might not like that blue much, but it goes great with that paisley cloth and stands out great with the copper accents!

Wow, super nice knife with a super nice sheath to go with it!

I'd LOVE to get my hands on (another) bow, but my bow spending has to be delayed a bit longer after the Grozer bow I bought last year. I'm unfamiliar with that kind of arrowhead, would you mind posting a pic? Might want to change this conversation to messages so we don't clutter up the board with archery talk.

Both! At least, it looks like you have the red and black fletching like mine. Szalóky has a store here in the United States on the West Coast so I was able to order some via mail. Everyone is impressed with them, and I love that they have a bodkin type arrowhead on the ones I have, they get a lot of looks (and tend to come out of the target easier)

Hey! I have those same arrows! LOL

I have that exact shade of pigskin suede and I agree, it's awesome looking on everything it goes on. Have to say, seeing a yellow blaze and stockings made me blink, but I can see why you wouldn't go with white since it would stand out so strongly. Only thing I'd like to see added is something on the hillside to make it not quite so flat, like maybe some tufts of grass lightly placed in there. Overall though very nice!

That is awesome looking! How hard it is to tie off the rope though?

I like the shape, size, and color of that satchel! Something that would really finish it up though would to do something with the edges, either burnish them (probably hard to do with that floppy a leather) or paint them. Time consuming, but it would really kick it into another level.

Thanks for the help, everyone. Looks like they're willing to settle for a different size and look after all. I'll be keeping an eye out from now on though because some of those kits look neat.

...They're 1/4". My bad for not lining it up on the proper spot.

It's likely a typewriter variant, but I'm hoping for the EXACT font/tools used. Nothing I've found so far gets it quite right, the E especially.

I have a customer who brought in a bunch of stuff to get framed (my day job) and one of those things is a leather name badge from their father's WWII uniform. The thing is, they're doing multiple frames and don't have enough of them for everyone, so they were hoping to get some duplicated. Does anyone recognize the font used for the lettering? You can see that it was done by hand with a single stamp at a time. The R's in particular are quite distinctive, and the center of the E is as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I approve of this level of nerdery.

Nice! I haven't tried any round braiding yet, looks like you're off to a good start.

Ditto the above, if that's your worst, I can't wait to see your best!

"Simple"? Liar! Looks awesome, and I rather like the subtle effect of black on black tooling.

Awesome dye job, the colors are perfect! Also love the bracers!

Thanks, Kiwi! That was honestly the biggest factor for me, the shape of the sheath flowing with the shape of the knife. I was a bit worried about how it would balance when on a belt, but it actually holds itself well, and naturally tilts forward. That might be an issue if the sheath was holding the knife loosely, but it's so tight right now that I need two hands to pull it out! Thanks for the tip! I cleaned off a LOT of the edges (actually shaved them down with a razor blade) the stitching looked a lot more uneven before I did that, as well as the sides jutting out from each other. I definitely fell into the trap of "but it looks so neat, I HAVE to put more in!" Next one I'll know better. Hopefully. Thanks for the kind words. I didn't even mention that I somehow managed to prick the wrong number of holes in the top layer so I ended up skipping holes. I'd be less bothered if the stitching wasn't dangerously close to the edges in places, makes it more an issue of "will this end up ripping?" vs. aesthetics. Hah! Well if we're our own worst critics, then anything thrown at us by other people sounds like praise. Hmm, since I ended up being the customer for this one, I think I'd fire myself! ;D Good advice though, and I'm glad to have learned something while making this piece.

FINALLY got this present finished, but I messed it up so much that I told my guy that I'll make him a better one based off the same pattern and color. (turns out he wants a stag and owl on it anyway) I probably went about making this thing ass-backwards, but in the end it turned out alright. In any case, it holds the knife tight and looks a hell of a lot more harmonious with it than the cheapo nylon sheath that came with it. I underestimated how close I had made the knotwork to the edge, and just how much tooling it would expand the leather so I ended up stitching over the very tip of the knotwork at the bottom. I'm not so pleased with how the tooling itself came out, either, but I'm still progressing with it.

Really nice background! I particularly like the darker leaves interrupting the pattern.

Gorgeous armor, and that's a creative way of displaying it too.

So I have a friend visiting and I need to figure out something I can make quickly that is still nice that she'll like. I come up with the idea of a small clutch or coin purse in the shape of a cat's face. I look around on the internet a bit for ideas and am not really seeing anything, so I do a few sketches and land on this one. Actually the sketch wound up being a frankenstein-like cat purse, but it seemed that everything was fighting me so I went simpler. For one thing, I couldn't find any rivets that were short enough for only one layer of leather. I'm not thrilled about the giant snap in the middle of the forehead, especially without the small rivets along the top to distract from it, but at least it's dark so it's not too noticeable from a distance. The lacing was another thing that gave me fits. I had gotten some of it completed when the lacing snapped, it was simply too old and had become brittle. I had already poked slits all around the edge though, so what can I do but lace? So I grab one of my longer pieces of Horween, a straight edge ruler, and a rotary cutter and try to make a consistent piece of lace and am moderately successful. It's much too thick to pull through the lacing slots though, and I'm not confident of my ability to skive the entire thing down. So I punch holes where the slits are and get lacing. You know something about thicker lace? It takes up more material. I was THREE HOLES SHORT. In retrospect, I probably could have pounded the lace to flatten it out more and add length before I started lacing, but hindsight and all that. So I cut a little more lace and splice it in. I think it turned out alright despite myself. Oh, and I probably should have used contrasting thread for the mouth, but I was really crunched for time at that point so shallow taps with the lacing nail and I called it acceptable.