Only pic I have of it finished...a few months later. I painted in the background areas with dark brown, lightly resist sealed the basketweave, then put more dark brown over.
I only messed up 3 times on the whole thing! It reads "McKinley", but I did want it to be more abstract and not so obviously "hey this is my name!". Did not own an edge beveler at the time.
These were my very first projects. My mom collects bee things, and they live where there are tons of black oaks...so...yes. Made some mistakes, as is expected, but I like how they turned out overall!
Now that is something that would make me stop walking. Usually I think colored dyes (mostly when applied to tooling) take away from the natural beauty of leather, but in this form I love it!