etchgirl

I do have one question though: When I mentioned at Tandy that I wanted to use an xacto blade, the workers there said "don't use that! it will mess us your cuts". Well, I did use the xacto and the knife and they both worked well for me. Was this not a good idea?

Thank you for the encouragement!

OK. After going to Tandy MULTIPLE times, downloading and looking at MANY videos (especially Bruce Chaney videos), I found out several things: 1. The leather was wrong. The leather I was using was some type of sealed leather. I remember buying it at Tandy a while back but never used it. I though it was a good piece of leather to use for a cover but not for carving. So, 2. I bought some veg tan and recut the cover. Spent all day yesterday carving and stamping into the veg tan and came up with this. I know come of the cuts are messed up, but this is the look I was looking for.

Thats what I want my graphic to look like! How do you do that? uou do that??

Actually i'm using an embosser tool, wet leather(dont know what kind; bought it long time ago), and a dremel

I live in Southern Louisiana. I do admit that I get really frustrated about carving so I don't do it too much. But, my husband wanted a piece with carving on it so I decided to try. Every time I look at it I just want to burn the darn thing.

This is supposed to be a notebook cover. This is the 7th time I've tried to do this. On tries 1-6, I carved the image directly onto the cover. It looked so bad (worse than what I have pictured.) that I had to chuck the piece altogether. Yes, for try #7 (and out of desperation), I carved the graphic on a separate piece of leather and glued it onto the cover. The graphic started to look really wacky when I tried to trim around the edges of the graphic and in the spaces in the letters "e" and "f". The leather started to shred and strand. I believe the problem I am having is this: I am trying to tool the image the same thickness as the graphic (most of the videos I've seen on youtube and tandy's website have people tracing single lines then tooling the image in the leather). When I try to eliminate to create the 3D image, the graphic starts to go off the rails. I believe the problem is the image itself. Does this make sense? I'm going to the class @ Tandy's on Saturday to see what I'm doing wrong with it.

How to case leather??

It looks horrible. And amateurish. I messed up on the openings on the"e" and the "f" and the upper curve of the "C". And I won't start on the chef's hat.

I NEED HELP! I'm making a bookcover for my husband's co-worker with a graphic on the front and I believe I'm doing this all wrong. Here's the graphic: I'm trying to carve this into leather but I believe I carved too much because it's not coming out like this.

Thanks for the heads up, D1ave! I just had a thought about what someone said about stitching. What I did is that I punched the holes on the sides of the case before I sewed it, got a round wooden dowel ( you can also use a piece of PVC pipe (about 1 1/2 in by 12 in)) and clipped the side and main pieces together, then sewed them together. It got easier once one side was sewed together.

I've done this eyeglass case also. The only problem I have is that it looks and feels like the sides should be thicker. I believe I used a 2-3 oz leather when I should have used a 4-5 oz.