Tiara

looks a bit like wolffish http://www.atlanticleather.is/index.php/en/wolffish-leather generally the eel leather I've seen for sale is in panels and isn't actually eel but hagfish and is fairly smooth with a line of wrinkly skin down the center. Oh the snake skins, which I love to work with, I've had good results with most of the usual products. Depends on how brittle they are. I have one old but still useable good sized piece of karung that is a bit brittle as well as some lower grade thin lizard skins that were rather brittle. I found some good info here on preserving old leather http://nautarch.tamu.edu/CRL/conservationmanual/File7.htm the glycerine/alcohol has helped on those with restoring flexibility but will leave it somewhat sticky and prone to pulling moisture from the air in humid conditions resulting in some translucence and made it a bit harder to glue later on. I have also used pecards exotic leather dressing on reptile leather but found that worked best for me applied after all work is done more as a surface finish--does add depth to it. What I've liked best so far with these brittle skins prior to working with them has been http://www.amazon.com/Lexol-NF-Neatsfoot-Leather-Dressing/dp/B006CUZ2UU working small amounts into the skins with fingertips to both sides and letting sit at least overnight before adding another coat, has not darkened too much and that will lighten up again after a week or so to close to the original shade, not given me any trouble I can recall with gluing and gave the best results with being able to work softer once I have enough on and it wicks all the way through. I tried pure neatsfoot oil once on a snakeskin I dyed that became very stiff after drying. Foolishly put on way too much and it made it so dark and oily I wasn't at all what I had hoped for. However, some alcohol helped get off a good part of that but it took time for that skin to lighten back up enough to be useable. Like 2 years of sitting in my scraps. I found that gently stretching in all directions and rolling it some with my hands, that lightened the color some more by bringing air into the scale pockets. After all this time, that piece finally was put to use as a nice cuff

We seem to have similar tastes! I also have personal symbols of dragon and phoenix. And play the Irish bodhran. My leather craft interest started with wanting to make a custom snakeskin band for one of my drums. I am not happy with that first effort and honing my skills to make a better one probably of gator with a matching shoulder harness so I can stand and move about and still get tonal changes. Yes that raku type or dichroic glass effects are similar to what I'm striving for. The snake sheds are now popular for fingernail art. Myself I can't stand anything on my nails. The few times I tried to wear nail polish I started to pick it off shortly after it dried. Being more of a tomboy type catching frogs. bugs and spiders than girly stuff and then on to dogs, horses and hunting with a camera, the patterns of nature from crystals to fibonacci sequences of sunflower spirals and sea shells, intrigue me. I found some black walnuts and after cleaning off the crud the shell pattern looks pretty cool edged with the gilding foil. The leftover flakes are still useable, don't throw scraps away. Flakes are sold for that purpose also. If you'd like, drop me a pm with your address and I'll send you a useable bit of shed to experiment with plus some beetle wings and other oddities.

Thank you for the kind words. Yes, I've been using mica, some such as Pearl ex meant for crafting, also auto paint pigments and cosmetic pigments, both of which are much more for the money. And some transparent/translucent acrylic mediums and now experimenting with UV set clear resins such as Solarez as the finish coat/sealer. Also using some heat embossing mediums--these are mostly all variations of hot glue powders such as Bonash mixed with some inks, micas or glitters. And then there are other fusible things such as angelina film and fiber http://www.texturatrading.com/angelina.html but I've not yet come up with a good way to use them over the patterned leathers the way I want. The film is significantly thicker than the heat transfer film. Which I got through this vendor http://www.ebay.com/usr/dckelly and use a small crafting iron set medium low for the transfer. I found higher heat counterproductive. and have some fingernail foils on order with some other unique effects. The angelina fiber and film and some glitters probably made of the same stuff but shredded, will change color when heated. Too hot and they bronze out and lose luster. lower temp iron or shorter time with a heat gun has worked better. The variegated foil is from http://www.ebay.com/usr/picassoframe?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2754 and used duo adhesive--it dries to tacky in a few minutes rather than the hours needed for traditional foiling adhesive. Rubber cement might work also if thin enough viscosity--the duo is very thin which I think helps the pattern show through. http://www.tkbtrading.com/ this is my source of cosmetic grade pigments, micas and glitters. I'm finding that there isn't much difference in one brand of acrylic to another for the items that don't flex much. For things such as cuffs that close with a snap or stud, I'm staying with Angelus more for its reputation as having better wear than other brands. One other thing I'm experimenting with is snake skin sheds. They can take a bit of dye--the tissue on the inner side soaks up more than the scales so the pattern shows and some have enough pigment left on the scales that interference mica/auto paint powders refract differently. The sheds can also become more flexible with some oils and conditioners. So far Lexol NF has worked best. Lets me handle them without breaking or tearing yet can still get some thinned acrylic paint to stick. I'm planning on some Xmas decorations with clear ornaments, the sheds and some combo of transparent/translucent effects. Adding some sort of clear top coat adds depth. May try some I'm working on a paper mache box as a gift. Put lizard on the top this morning, another pattern of variegated leaf and deciding on what to do with the edge and bottom portion. I'll try to get better pix when done. The UV set resins look interesting. Solarez has some that are flexible, various degrees of durability, high viscosity for self doming and some thin ones for casting. Some can be trimmed with a scissors if cast thinly enough. One more effect I'm starting to try is mixing some of the pigments and powders with wax such as Pecards or Renaissance wax. There are some gilding waxes and pastes and rub n buff that will work on leather. the 2 commercial ones I've tried work nicely but both stink with the solvents. I've tried one blend of Pecards with pigment and had promising results so far. Ah, and one other thing next on my experiment list are some of the heat moldable products to use as a base for wet molding the thin leathers onto. I want to get away from using metal cuff bases if possible. May use craft wire mesh as an inner layer so it can be adjusted to fit and easier to cut to shape. I find myself more and more drawn to asymmetric shapes and patterns. The natural embellishments of rice and blister pearls, beetle wings, --those crushed with a rolling pin make a cool mosaic with more refraction than abalone, gator scutes, shark teeth, gar scales, have enough randomness to keep my visual interest. Dang wish I had taken a good pic of the cuff with the gator. Dyed oxblood, block print type effect with a black/red mica powder on the top of the scale pattern but just used a fingertip to spread the powder and used a clear varnish over the whole thing for depth. It was a piece of flank leather with lumpy bits rather than the hornback or belly. I'll ask the woman I gave it to if she can get a good pic. and then on to some salt dye special effects as well as trying some acrylic marbling and alcohol layering. The diluted acrylics let the mica pigment/powder combos separate in interesting ways.

ah, finished loading. one plain snakeskin buckle and the other is a baby gator headpiece buckle, bronze mica pigment in acrylic, and a better shot of the ostrich

attaching next pic, more on the lizard with the holo heat transfer and ostrich with some copper interference pigment in clear acrylic base. last one is python with blue #15 cosmetic grade pigment powder lightly rubbed on and sealed, jewel beetle wings and rice pearls, uploading a couple more pics and will post tomorrow

I like to work with exotic leathers for the textures. And use various effects to show off the textures. I have some small cobra skins with fine textures but ugly dye job I got cheap for practice work. And a some lizard that has dark markings but the light areas are a dull color, hard to change with dye. But I found a few things that are interesting to do with them. Here's a couple of bits I used variegated gilding leaf on. It's thin enough the scale pattern came through. Hard to get a good picture indoors. Will try for a better one in daylight. One bit of the lizard has a holographic oil slick heat transfer on part of it. This is interesting as the heat transfer foil only caught the tips of the scale. I plan on doing some transparent interference effects using diluted angelus neutral base and added dry pigment. I have some other heat transfer foils along with a clear coat that acts as a resist. I've done a bit of this sort of enhance the textures on some cuffs in snakeskin, gator and ostrich. Reached max upload will post in next part.

Thanks Bob. I hope to be trying something like this soon. I'll keep your tips bookmarked to refer back to. I see you're in Florida. Are you going to try to hunt down your own pythons? With all I've heard about how they are flourishing and so difficult to hunt, it's hard to believe they are truly decreasing in numbers in Asia. If whatever methods they are using in Asia to hunt them could be brought here, you might have a cheap source of skins and the Everglades ecosystem might recover.

Very nice! I think I saw this on a Tandy premium video. The process was to use a swivel knife to cut the edges and a beveler to create a channel, then glue the piece in. Was this about what you did? The video used a hair on hide inlay. I wondered at the time if thickness of the inlay might mean needing to tamp down the area under it a bit to keep it from extending too far above. That might increase wear. Most of the python I have is fairly thick. Did yours extend above the background much?

I think I have one piece of karung. It was an unidentified old skin I got cheaply. Rather dried out with some faint markings on a beige background. Small diamond shaped scale pattern. I have found a way to get a 2 tone effect on snake skin. Works better on larger scale patterns. You can mess around with different variations on the method. Dye from the top as the scales will deflect dye into the channels and it absorbs p under the scales in different shades. Works best on translucent scale patterns but there is another option for dark scales with paints in a minute. I've dyed a light color from the back first so it is all even. Different effects on the top dye if the skin is dry, pre wetted or still damp from back side dye. Pick has 2 samples on cobra. With this possibly karun bit, I did get some two tone effect with acrylic based cloth paints, similar to cova/angelus leather paints. This brand is lumiere. You can also get the fine ground pigments and add to the base. Pearl ex is their brand of colored mica but I've also used auto paint pigment and micas from a DIY cosmetic company--very cheap samples and wide range of colors. So I have translucent, color shift pearls and color shift opaques that can be dilute to semi transparent, and some that are black with spectral tones. Can blend any of these or layer. So for one test piece on this karung, I did a block dye with a dark color to bring out the points. When dry, I diluted one of the green paints quite a bit with water so it flowed into the channels between the scales. When dry, I tested both with a transparent pearl highlighter--I used a light blue. The blue shows more on the dark points but gives a slight blue pearl on the green also. The other bit I used a green/gold color shift. I'll see if I can get the link for the image to work, been a while since I added an image hmm, no luck uploading the image, Will try to send via pm

I've gotten several gator and caiman from ebay at decent prices. All have had a back that looked much like that. I have lined everything I've made. One was so fuzzy I singed it with a lighter as I thought the fuzzies might weaken the glue bond. I like the unusual textures and patterns of the tail, legs, sides and prefer hornback to belly myself. I've made cuffs, simple hair barrettes with leaving it somewhat irregular in shape and acrylic paints. There are some mica pigments that can be added to clear acrylic base that are very cool on exotic leathers. Some are highlights that show up more on dark areas or 2 tone with one color on light areas. another on the dark. The acrylics can be thinned with water to flow well. On the darker pieces, think of say gold thinned enough to flow into the crevices. Or the reverse, a gold tipping on the dark background. Dark red is cool that way also. I'll see if I can get a good pic of a hair clip I made with a scrap that was almost a butterfly shape. Was a light brown scrap, dyed it green and used 3 shades of acrylic, an emerald, blue and blue/green shift. Has an almost jewel like effect. One friend of mine has threatened to steal it. Belt buckles, cuffs, bracelets, dog collars--I've made prong collar covers out of caiman tail and other exotics. A guitar strap out of another section of tail, this was hornback. Buyer was ecstatic. Have fun with it, looks like some nice sections there. If you don't want to mess with the scraps I'll bet you could sell it here. I'm flush with gator now or I'd offer to take you up on it.

The heat gun will help. I've found thin layers are better, diluted with water if need be. Let it dry, hit it with the heat gun and it will be stronger. One thing about this is it will be easy to reapply if needed. But I find that sort of solution irritating. Not being the type of woman who wears nail polish, but thinking of various things that might work, nail polish may be your best solution. There are also craft glues and resin mediums that dry clear. Some are interesting in that they are self doming and optically clear enough to act like a magnifier and can give a jewel like depth Phil's idea of a permanent marker topped with a resin that will add some depth and durability might be interesting.

I've dyed shark teeth and alligator scutes with leather alcohol dyes. It takes soaking them for hours to days to get the degree of saturation I want. The teeth soak up the dye from the root end much more than the enamel surface. The bone suckes it up from the pores in the scutes. Since the stingray star is polished calcium deposits, it might be worth trying dye on it. I'd take a small scrap, polish part of it to get some of the deposits and soak that in dye to see if you get anywhere. What have you tried? how much wear and tear will it get? I'm messing around right now with some scraps. Using a dremel sanding wheel to polish the tips to bring up a white spot. This is on the small nubs over the main area of the skin. I'm experimenting with clear acrylic fabric medium--lumiere paint extender. and mixing in powdered pigments or diluting the lumiere paints. I mix in either pearl ex mica powders or automotive powder coating powders. If not exposed to a lot of friction it wears well without heat setting, is water resistant but not water proof. heat setting may make it more durable as well as more water resistant. I've done quite a few belt buckles and cuffs this way. Diluting the medium with water can give translucent effects. The other new method I'm messing with is to use heat activated embossing powders. This is basically a powdered heat activated adhesive. I've gotten some interesting effects with mixing some of the mica/auto powders into clear fine embossing powder. It's applied with embossing 'ink' some are slow drying glycerin based and some are heat activated--what I've used so far. I'm working on getting fine layers on the raised patterns of stingray, snake and the like. best result for this partial effect is to use the 'ink pad' a sponge with the fluid in it rubbed lightly over the leathers, have the powder in a thin layer in a pan, hit the ink with the heat gun, quickly set the leather ink side down in the powder, lift, tap off the excess and hit it with the heat gun until it melts. The minimum amount of time needed to get the powder to turn molten is best. more and it starts to bead up. I've used this for some buckles, cuffs and hair clips, nothing with much wear and tear. I've been using the palette brand stamp and stick ink/glue pad as it is the heat activated one available locally from hobby lobby. which also carries some of the embossing powders. lots of embossing powders from different companies such as ranger but bo nash 007 bonding powder is the same stuff and you can add any very fine pigment as long as the heat won't affect the color. oh, forgot, there are also alcohol dyes that can be added to the embossing powder such as ranger ink. haven't yet tried leather dye mixed in with it, let dry and applied. not sure if the heat gun will affect it. For the low abrasion and limited flex applications I've tried, the embossing powder has worked well. The acrylic medium does also. diluted I can get a thinner layer and more translucent. Depends on the effect you want. Neither rubs off with a light touch but doubt either would wear well with a lot of friction.

thanks Andy!

My sweetheart asked me to make this for his son who collects knives. Bought the knife on ebay and had some rowstone stingray. Since this was to be a boot knife with clip I was uncertain about making a secure sheath. I recycled a hard sheath listed as a boot/neck knife sheath with a cord through the end. I didn't like the clip that was on it, cut it off, used a metal clip plus thin black leather to cover the resin on back and sides, painted both black to match, used the epoxy glue recommended by the maker to attach the leather to the handle and front of the sheath, sanded edges and touched them up with the same black acrylic paint and was done. The thickness of the row stone makes the sheath hold it tightly for wearing as a neck knife. Far from a great job but for my first one it came out acceptable enough that the young man loves it. The combo of black stingray and the black/gray of the knife was my sweetheart's idea. We think it worked well enough to be pleasing.

I wrote a post on what I did with the fish skin crust here http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=47896 The asymmetrical cuffs and barrette were dyed, oiled and then finished with Angelus satin acrylic finish. As the caiman was rough on the inside I glued some deerskin for comfort and added button studs. Glued a barrette blank to a small deekskin patch as the caiman was too rough inside to glue well and then glued the caiman to the deerskin.

I bought some stretched but unfinished fish crust skins from sealeather.com They are pretty pliable to start with, a pale gray and sort of a suede texture. The green and blue asymmetrical cuff and buckle were dyed green first and then partially dyed with blue, using a rather dry sponge and hitting the edges of the scale pockets and a bit of the center. Dried overnight. I don't know how well you can see the difference in the texture of the cuff and buckle. The cuff had a bit of a wrinkle in it I was hoping to smooth out. While everything I have read about the times you might need to iron leather using low heat I tried something a bit different. The cuff was not as soft as I wanted it to feel so I brushed on a light coat of glycerin, water and alcohol. about 80% alcohol, 15% water and 5% glycerin. let it equalize for about an hour and then while still damp, covered it with paper and ironed it at medium low heat. The wrinkled area wasn't changing much so I tried adding some water to the iron and hit it with a few blasts of steam. This raised the scale pockets up about an 1/8th of an inch giving it some interesting texture so I did the whole cuff and let dry over night. I was curious if acrylic paint base would sort of glue down the scale pockets or affect the cuff's now raised pockets. I mixed Angelus leather paint neutral with some blue green color shift pigment and diluted it a bit. I took the skin meant for the buckle which hadn't been ironed/steam treated or used glycerin on. The acrylic paint did smooth down the edges and seems to be holding down well. Glued the skin to the veg tan and stitched. The paint on the cuff didn't weigh down the raised pockets and the texture brings out the color shift more. The only bright sunlight I've had recently to take pix in has been at noon so it flattens out the shadows. I'll try to get some better pix as lighting permits. The black piece I didn't use glycerin on but did steam treat to raise the pockets a bit. I sprayed it with a high gloss acrylic finish as the satin finish seemed too dull on this when I tested a corner. The high gloss on the rough textured leather didn't come across as looking like plastic and gave more contrast and depth to the scale pockets. This became a belt buckle for my sweetheart. He didn't want something too flashy but with enough pattern to be interesting. I'll get a pic of the finished buckle to post. I had bought some samples of various finishes of fish leather several months ago. The satin and gloss finishes are quite firm and on some of them the scale pattern didn't show very well with the dye and finish. I didn't use suede dye, just the Angelus and Fiebings I had on hand. If I ever want to keep a suede feel to the fish leather, I'll get some suede dye. So far for these 3 items the dye didn't stiffen it so much it was hard to stitch, I like the finishes and the steam treatment with or without the glycerin lets me vary the texture.

Spartan, I hope you can find what you are looking for. I do love those reptile skins. Roje usually carries some croc hornback but it is pricier although more consistent in shape and more flexible.

oops quoted the article incorrectly the heat was lower. Here's the link. http://www.leathermag.com/features/featurefeasibility-of-using-powder-coating but that isn't the main question I was asking. I was wondering if anyone had used the pigments in a regular acyrlic base instead of mica craft powders. I haven't ironed any of the leather I've used the lumiere acrylic paints on but I have used an iron on low heat on some snake skin that had wrinkles. worked fine and the skin didn't get overly hard. the heat treatment on fabric appears to set in the threads for washing but isn't required on leather. forget the heat treating part, I'm curious about how the pigments might work in a clear acrylic paint base. The color range is great and if the coverage is similar to the powder lumiere pigments it will be much cheaper. far more special effects such as color shifting. Might be cool to have a motorcycle seat in the same colors as the bike and helmet.

I've used lumiere craft powders and the acrylic base for it with good results for opaque, translucent and pearlescent effects. The powders are mica and the acrylic base doesn't need heat treating for leather but is recommended for use on fabric. Generally ironing the fabric from the back after allowing several days to dry and off gas. Has anyone tried using auto paint powders in an acrylic base? The color range is broader and the powders I've priced are significantly cheaper. Some should do fine they are also mica. I'm wondering about some of those used for powder coating. I did find an article on research being done to adapt some powder coating to use on damp leather via electro static spray and heating at 200 C for 20 minutes and considered that powder coatings will be feasible for leather once some details are worked out.

check ebay and consider using caiman as it is much cheaper. the scutes on part of it are hard and can make sewing difficult but depending on where you need to cut and stitch can make a more affordable alternative. the tail is not the same as the horn back strip. Is this what you mean? http://www.ebay.com/...65a2694<br />or something like the tail portion of this one? http://www.ebay.com/...006da2a<br />if you contact the store of the second one, "Uncle George" will work with you outside ebay. He often has hornback strips, the caiman will be smaller than the croc shown above but only about 20 bucks from George I was looking for unfinished skins to dye myself and he checked the tannery for some meeting my needs and charged less with delivery than the ebay price for similar skins. He did have some tail pieces offered a while back but they were cut like the second link where hornback tails would looke like this. http://www.ebay.com/...=item4d0b7ea7c6 a lot of skins listed as gator or croc are caiman that is mislabeled. I bought some horn head pieces a while back that were mislabed but I knew it when I bought them. The pattern is different from croc or gator. If you like the way the skins looks the only other factor is that the scutes will be hard where gator or croc is flexible. Just don't pay more for a less expensive skin. http://www.alligatorfur.com/alligator/croc.htm

Here is the email reply I received. I realized yesterday that the minimum order is for dyed and finished leather. I asked yesterday but don't expect a reply until the business week starts about buying smaller amounts of crust or at least undyed, unfinished skins. I don't know at what point in their processing it goes from crust to supple but not dyed or finished. If there is still a minimum order, perhaps several people looking for undyed skins might want to split it up? Thank you for taking interest in our fish leather. I‘m happy to send you some samples of our colors and finishes in fish leather via mail. Attached is our price and size list in USD. We color to customers orders so we don‘t keep much stock. Our minimum is 20 pcs per color. We don‘t have a white wolffish. We have tried to color it white but it turnes out to be more of a grey color. The natural color of the wolffish is grey. The price of shipping depends on how we ship and the weight of the parcel. We use both post and express delivery like UPS, FedEx and DHL. The price for a small package (up to 1 kilo) is around 53 USD via UPS and around 29 USD via post. Best regards/bestu kveðjur, Sóley Sigmarsdóttir Sales & Marketing Atlantic Leather/Loðskinn Borgarmýri 5 550 Sauðárkrókur Iceland Tel:+354 512 8024 www.atlanticleather@atlanticleather.is

I think I still have the price list. I'll send it to you via pm. I've not yet ordered from them but do hope to this month as finances permit. I really want some of the wolf fish and cod, possibly that rougher looking perch.

The shipping to the US from Canada is a bit steep.

Thanks for the link and coupon code. I'll check them out now.

Skin arrived today and very nice quality. Marked on the back as made in Indonesia. Truly is 12' 6" long and 10" wide with 3 small holes. Markings are crisp and has a glaze finish. For the price I am quite pleased.