Bob Blea

Nice work Chief, love your lacing as always.

Those turned out pretty nice!

That's amazing and very cool! You should be proud!

Really nice. I love your wolf carving on the back of the cantle on the first one.

Both the leaves and the basket stamp look great. You've got really nice dimension on the leaves.

Grey Drakkon has excellent advice! Try the techniques on scrap first so you can become comfortable with whichever one you choose first. That is a really nice carving and it would be a tragedy to ruin it.

Mujician I routinely apply Neatsfoot oil to my projects and then after it soaks in overnight add a coat of lacquer (Wyosheen or Neat lac/Clear Lac) or Resolene as a resist and I never have problems with it adhering to the leather. Same with using acrylic paints after oiling. If you put on a light coating it should soak into the leather and you won't have any problems. But try it on some scrap and get a feel for it before trying it on your project.

Nice job on the tooling! It looks like you have some good detail there. I wouldn't want to dye it black myself because you will not be able to see the detail after your done unless you look really closely. If it were me I would resist the whole piece then antique it. That will highlight your dragon carving and darken the rest of the leather a bit. If I really wanted the leather around the dragon a light brown, I would resist just the dragon and antique the whole piece. I use Tandy Gel Antiques and when they go on bare leather I get a nice brown color from Saddle Tan or Tan, but the dragon with the resist would maintain it's more natural color but get the highlighting effect from the antique. (NOTE: I haven't tried this trick with Feibings antique yet so I can't guarantee it works the same way. It should.) Probably an easier way to get the same effect would be to dye the untooled leather by hand with your brown dye, being careful to keep it out of your carving. This can be hard with a large area because it's easy to get unevenness with dye (at least in my experience) and you have to be careful it doesn't bleed into your carving. After the dye is good and dry apply a resist to the dragon and then buff the whole thing thoroughly to remove the excess dye pigments. I would then finish resisting the whole piece and apply antique to the whole piece. Anyhow that is how I would handle this. Hope it helps.

Thanks for the compliment and your right it would have looked better to make the stitching groove and then color the leather. In this case it's just an antique on leather with no resist, but I could have easily saved the antique step until after it was assembled and I had made the groove. That would have made a better overall finish.

Nice simple design. I like it!

Thanks all!

I like it. I've thought of trying to make one of these too. Yours turned out great.

I think you did a pretty good job!

Thank you very much!

This was a small card holder I started near the beginning of this year. It was mainly to test dyeing techniques that I was going to use in a custom order I had for a large 8x11 notebook. I liked how the dyed flower came out but I never finished this up until just recently. I finally added the back pocket and stitched it all up and posted it to my Etsy site. Minimal card wallets don't get much more minimal than this! I like how it turned out and I definitely need to be using more color with my carvings.

Thanks for posting this. I've had the same problems with trying to glue fabric to the flesh side of leather. I'm looking forward to giving this a try!

I use Oxalic Acid to clean mold of leather. It's stronger than vinegar so I'm a little more confident it's really killing off the spores. But I've never tried it on suede. I've used lemon juice and it works well, but again I've never tried that on suede either.

I'm always amazed by the level of craftsmanship and detail that goes into making something like this. It is just fascinating!

Thanks for posting, this is great to see.

I think your pattern looked pretty good and so did your tooling. Too bad about the dye though. I don't know why it would do that. What kind of dye was it?

Dragonfly your basically right about the 'S' shape. The other shape you will commonly see, though not in belt designs because there isn't enough room, are circles with S shaped flow lines connecting them. That is more common on larger projects like notebook covers where there's more room. Regarding background area, there isn't a set rule that I'm aware of. It's a matter of personal preference but bargrounding (which is traditional in Sheridan style) can be very time consuming and many people can't stand it, so it makes sense to create as little of it as possible. I think what you have in your drawings looks pretty good, but I really try to keep my background areas pretty small. Bob

Not stupid at all. RTC is a product made by Bee Natural Leathercare. The full name is RTC Sheridan Resist and Finish and it's used as both a resist for antique and a final finish for leather projects. A lot of people swear by it. I have a bottle but I haven't experimented with it yet.

They look good.

If you are not using a resist like Resolene or any of the lacquer type products, the leather may be absorbing more antique is some spots just based on differences in the firmness of the grain at those spots. When that happens it's penetrating the leather so much that I doubt there is much you could do to remove it. If you are using a resist, you likely had a spot where there wasn't enough of the resist and the antique penetrated it. I've had this problem on several occasions and I recommend using a damp sponge to wipe the project after you've applied the resist. If there are any gaps the leather will darken and you'll know you need another coat.

I'm curious to see how this turns out too. I've wanted to do this but I'm not sure how to attach the liner either.