Skinner88

Hahaha Hi Mike! That's David Lee Roth's nickname, I can't go and steal it now

Hello Johanna, I was searching this site to see how to change my name and wanted to reach out as suggested above. If "SkinnerLeather" isn't taken would it be possible to have Skinner88 changed to that? I created my profile when I first started leather work and would like it to reflect where I'm at now. Thank you in advance

Anytime! I think I will take you up on your suggestion. I signed onto this forum when I just started out leather crafting and kind of lost touch with it after frequenting FB groups.

It would appear that I'm a little late in seeing this post, my apologies. Someone had contacted me yesterday inquiring about a machine and mentioned they saw my name here. My name is Dave Skinner from Ottawa, Ontario Canada and as of last year I am the Eastern Canadian Distributor for the Leather Machine Co. If anyone in Eastern Canada has any questions about the Cobra line of machine feel free to reach out to me at skinnerleather@rogers.com. You can also contact me through my Facebook page at facebook.com/skinnerleather.

Tomsmith: I'm not sure if an opinion from someone you don't know is helpful but the people at the Leather Machine Company are the best "people" in the buisness. I say people because they aren't salesman. Cobra Steve started this company coming from the background of servicing industrial sewing machines so "sales" is not his forte, he focuses on quality and making sure people are happy with their machines for the life of the machine. From what I know you can contact them at anytime and someone will be more than happy to discuss your sewing needs and see if one of their machine is right for you, no sales pitches at all. I hope that is helpful in some why, in the end a simple call to them costs nothing and will probably have to taking some education from it.

Thanks Bob, I will most definately try that on a scrap in the next few days and see what result I can get. I keep trying different things only to end up ruining my work.

Thanks Fullmetalsam, your post I think is what I needed to hear. My concerns came from my time doing the craft but you're right, I've seen Etsy and ya, I'm confident in my product now LOL. As for the pricing your comments really help too. I'm a freelance graphic designer and I can appreciate the cost of time and how to bill it. Based on my 25+ years of experience I have a $40/hr rate but I can't very well charge that for my time doing leather, I'll just have to find the right $. Right now I sold 2 coin purses for $50 but was told after someone would pay $75. Your comment "It's a side business afterall, so there's no point to waste my time on something that's not gonna be worth while." helps a lot as well. Thanks for the feedback everyone, much appreciated.

Thanks for the compliments, I'm blown away at what comes out myself each time. I may have a few things going in my favour though: I'm an artist since childhood, I'm a graphic designer with print production exp for the last 25 yrs, I'm a model builder, and my last name is Skinner lol. The only thing I can think of is it must be in my blood or something and all my career/hobby choices seems to have come into play, too bad I found the craft at 42.

Hello again. I hadn't heard much feedback since my last post so I thought I'd put a couple of images here and see if I might be able to get some people's feedback and critique. I'm about 3-4 months into this craft and know there are many areas I need more practice in (the camo tool, veiner tool and accent cuts are issues for sure) but I'm open to any additional feedback, critique or anything else to help me improve. I also have 2 questions: 1. Acrylic Resolene seems to be my enemy. I have to "air" application so I'm using a sponge brush. The water based pigment dies seem to either come off on the edges of the tooling (See Mallet pic) or it smears the colour or antiquing (See iPhone cover pic). 2. I have requests for items but have no idea how to price things. Any tips? Thanks in advance for any assistance, tips, advice, etc.. anyone might have. If you'd like to see more photos all my projects to date are posted here: www.facebook.com/skinnerleather

Moron moment, typo. Fixed orig post too. www.facebook.com/skinnerleather

Hello everyone, What a great site for a guy who's just starting out, thanks to the powers that be. I'm wondering if members of this site might have some time to provide me with some feedback when they have some time. I'm wondering if I'm rushing things a little starting a small side business or if I'm right on track and thought this might be a place to start to get feedback. I took a 10hr Intro to Leather Carving course at Zelikovitz Leather here in Ottawa in Oct/Nov of last year and almost didn't take to the craft. Something clicked in the last 30min of the course and I've been hooked since. After a handful of projects, and the urging of the owner at Zelikovitz, I've opened up a little side business doing carving and kits for friends and the owner of Zeli's passing my name to people requesting carving. At the risk of sounding like a braggart the owner was telling me I'm doing things in 2.5 months that some take 2.5 years. With that siad here lies my concern... Is my ability up to par. I'm not here to do a plug for my biz in any way, but I will provide a link to my facebook site for my biz that has photos of all my projects at different stages. I thought it might be easier to put a link up vs uploading a ton of pics. If anyone has the time to review and offer any feedback, critique, or other helpful tip I'd love to hear them, and greatly appreciate them. Here's the site: www.facebook.com/skinnerleather Thanks in advance and I can't wait to absorb as much info as I can from this site.