Willis7737

Thanks everyone! I think this will help my decision. I appreciate the step by step Cheryl, and the attention to being cost effective. And I checked out that webstie Ferg, and it's hard to believe what he has done. His pieces are AMAZING.

First off I just wanted to say that I haven't been posting very long and already I can tell this is a very helpful and supportive community of leather workers. Just wanted to say thanks all around because that in itself is amazing! Anyways I have a question. I am going to be making some bracelets here in the near future and am going to be tooling a few flowers into them. What I want to do is put a few flowers on them and give just the flowers some color. Now I know that you can use acrylic paint on them or you can use stain (...? is that correct?) Does anyone here have an opinion on which works better in terms of the life of the item and being cost effective? I have some seen some belts with acrylic paint online recently and it looked AWFUL. Now obviously this doesn't mean that all acrylic on leather looks bad, but I was hoping to get someone's opinion on the matter before I go out and spend some $$$. Thoughts? Thanks! Will

What do you mean by thumbprints? Do you mean the initial place where the knife goes in? Thank you for the advice! I will keep this all in mind on my next piece. It sounds like I need some knife work.

I'm new to leather craft and love it. This is my third piece I've done after a key fob and small knife pouch. Please Please Please let me know if you have any tips, or critiques after looking at this. Thanks! Will

Thanks for the advice you two! I am definitely going to go the MacGuyver route with this at least with the first one until I either get good enough to not need a setter or get enough money together to actually get one. To Glendon- I cannot BELIEVE the price difference between Tandy and the other website you showed. It's outrageous. There is a Tandy shop about 3 hours away so it's nice for convenience but thats about it. Thanks for pointing out this new website. I'll be going through them from now on.

Greenhorn here looking for a little help with making a decision on spot setting. I'm just getting into leatherwork, and I'm looking to do it for two reasons, one to have fun/pickup a useful hobby, and two, make a little extra cash on the side. In about two weeks, I am going to some barrel racing finals with my fiance for her to compete and for us to try and sell our crafts for a little extra money. I'll get to the point: I want to order these and these so that I can make some saddle charms. With the gem spots, I found multiple ways to set them, but I've never done it myself. I found an actual spot setter on tandy, but it's $40 and I want to keep my overhead down as much as possible. While searching the forums I found that others just measure it out, cut some holes, and place the spots in there and bend the ends. Someone else suggested this adjustable slot punch. What is your opinion based on the project I'm doing? It's definitely not very thick vegetable tanned leather, so it shouldn't be tough to just cut some holes and place them in there, but do you think it would look finished enough? Do you recommend the adjustable slot punch because it's cheaper? Do you think I should just bite the bullet and get tandy's spot setter? Any creative ideas and helpful advice would be fully appreciated. Thank you!