CitizenKate

The biggest issue in these photos are glare and lighting/exposure. There needs to be plenty of light on the subject, and the exposure of your camera needs to be set so that all of the subject is light enough to see all the color and detail. Often, the "auto" exposure features of your camera will not choose the right exposure for the subject if there is a lot of back-lighting from the background. This gives you a photo that is underexposed. To get rid of the glare, change the angle of the lighting and/or the position of the strap so the light's "hot spot" doesn't bounce off the subject straight back to the camera. It also helps reduce glare if you have a way of diffusing the light from your light source. A soft box (or "light box") is a good solution for that. Kate

It seems to work best for me if I place long strappy things in a loop. A part of it will get hidden by this arrangement, but if what is hidden is the same as what appears in the parts that show, I don't worry about alternate views. If the hidden part does have something unique to the part that shows in the main view, I make alternate views. Can you show us an example or two of the ones you've done? Kate

Hi bronc, The speckling is most likely done by stamping around the inside of the border with one of the E294 series stamps, hitting the stamp progressively lighter as you work towards the inside of the area being stamped. The dye work around the edges can be easily done by just spraying dye around the edges with an airbrush. If you don't have an airbrush, you can get a similar effect by dripping some dye into a piece of cotton cloth and rubbing it around the edges. It takes some practice with this method to get the saturation of dye just right so it fades gradually towards the inside of the area being dyed, but it works fairly well once you get the hang of it. I'll defer the question about neetsfoot oil and oil dyes to someone who has worked with those products together. Kate

Yes, I'm talking about the inlay. That is neat, Ken! Kate

I like the ones that have included border stitching. What is that in the middle? Kate

Hi Amber/Ty, PM sent. Kate

That sounds even better than what I was thinking of. Kate

That's a cool idea, Ed! What do you think of possibly adding an adjustable gate to serve as a feed guide? Kind of like on a routing table... I think some leather sewing machines have some kind of guide for the leather, too. Just a thought, though. Kate

I swear, I'm going to remove that post! That is not what we thought it meant when I was growing up. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CLAY! AGAIN! Kate

Ooooo... very nice, Andy! I love it! Kate

We've been hearing that there is some confusion about how to get listings set up in the Directory. So I have added a Help & How-To section with step-by-step instructions on how to do this, along with some other useful information. So if you have been wanting to set up a directory listing, but haven't been sure where to start, visit this page to get started: http://leatherworker.net/pmd/pages/general-how-to.html And any time you're in the Directory and need help figuring something out, click on the [Help & How-To] link in the menu on the left side. We plan to keep adding to it, so please don't hesitate to contact us and as questions if you're not sure about something. Thanks for your participation, and keep the feedback coming! Kate

Looks good, Josh! Good to see you're all settled in with your new digs. I had the same thought about the round knife, but Bruce already pointed that out, so no need to beat a dead horse. Kate

CD, you are light years ahead of a lot of of writers out there who advise beginners to design their booth primarily for aesthetics. I am a little more interested in observing what sells, too, because I feel that stopping and looking is just part of the process. For me, the bottom line is, what is getting bought, and why? We have noticed the same thing, and decided to re-design our display so it places everything to the front of the booth and around the sides. The booths we saw that were arranged that way were getting the most browsing traffic by far. Oh yes. I can't believe the number of vendors I've seen who stand out in front of their booths, greeting people as they pass by, but inwardly almost begging people to come in... you can always see a wave of traffic steering around them. I did see one leatherworker at a show who had his bins of twiggy stuff set towards the back of the booth. For some reason, the swarm was all over them. It was hard to get in and out, but people couldn't resist it. I dove in myself just to see what was in the honey pot. Came out with one of his key fobs, which I still carry today. When I figure out what happened to me, I'll be sure to let you know. Ha! (He really did have a lot of great stuff, though.) We set up a demo table at the show we (Deb59, azrider, and I) did in September, and we will definitely do it again. It certainly did attract people to our booth, and while we were talking to people about what we were demonstrating, others figured our booth was a happening place and stepped in to browse. Kate

Very interesting discussion. It boils down to, what is considered a copy or reproduction, versus what is considered inspired. Seems like there is too much room for a double standard. In other words, if I copy something, I can say it was inspired, but if you are inspired by something I drew, I can claim you have copied it. I suppose some discussion about the actual process of using one piece of art to create another might shed some light. I thought what Troy mentioned was interesting. I had a recent exchange with a site that contains a very large collection of tattoo art. Their terms of service said the art on this site could be used either by individuals looking to get a tattoo, or by tattoo artists as reference material to create tattoos, and they encouraged paid subscribers (of which I was one) to grab all the art they wanted. At first, I assumed that if it was okay for tattoo artists to charge their customer a fee to reproduce the art in a tattoo, it must be okay for a leather artist to reproduce the art on a piece of leather and sell it. After using some of the art on a couple of pieces I made, I decided I wasn't so sure I really had permission to use the art in the manner I was, so I emailed the site owner, told them what I wanted to do and asked them if it fell under the terms of acceptable use. They responded, no, you do not have our permission to use our art for leather work. I was surprised and disappointed, but since they own the copyright, I also assume they get to say what we can or cannot do with the art. So I have complied with their wishes, but reading this topic makes me wonder. Of course, I won't do anything with the art for commercial purposes unless I am 100% sure it's legal to do so. We really can't rely on just what makes sense to us, because sometimes the laws just don't make sense. But it sure would be nice if we could get some clarity on these rules, so we don't have to keep guessing, even with art that we draw ourselves based on something else that inspired us. Kate

Ya done your duty, mister! LOL Savor the coming moments, they are so precious! Congratulations! Kate

Thanks for mentioning that, Ben. We archive all our content pretty regularly, but there's nothing we can do to preserve it if it is hosted elsewhere. Kate

Whenever I need to see a "real" something, and that something happens to be out of season, I do an image search on Google. This image might help you figure out how you want to make a sunflower seed pod: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Sunflowers.jpg Kate

It's my maker stamp. A little different from the oval-style signature, but it seems to suit what I do. LOL I use a 6lb maul. Kate

I held off posting mine until dirtclod received it. He let me know this morning it arrived there already, so here's mine: Kate

Nice, Tim! The oil finish really brings out the natural beauty of the leather, and your tooling gets cleaner all the time. Kate

LOL That's so funny... I saw that title and thought to myself, there's a question for Mr. Post-Apocalypse... and then I saw who make the first reply! Also, you can give leather more of a kind of hammered look using a pear shader like a matting tool. A combination of the two stamps would probably give you the look you're after. Kate

Larry, I've been able to strip acrylic finishes (like *shene, resolene, etc.) with just water. A wet sponge works, and just keep rinsing off the sponge as you wipe off the finish. If you used antique, most or all of that will also come off with the finish. Then you should be able to apply more dye. If you just had dye under the finish, probably what streaked was some residue on the surface of the leather that did not get absorbed completely into the leather. To prevent that in the future, it helps to buff over the dye with a soft cloth before applying antique or finish over it. If you used antique, the shene will smear the antique if you wipe it around too much. To avoid this, try to apply the shene in just one or two strokes over any given area. Kate

Sending you a PM shortly, Eric, and I'll take care of the link, too. Great stuff! Kate

What you have done with your own blog is great, and please let me clarify that we certainly do not presume to suggest what you should write there! Different blogs have different purposes, and even here, there is a pretty wide range of content that is acceptable, from more formal, informative material, to more a more personal side of things. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about when I refer to "human interest". I think both the forum and the blogs allow some flexibility for members to post whatever they have to contribute. One of the reasons we added this feature to the site was to provide a better publishing medium for instruction. However, we are planning to continue allowing people to post tutorials in the forum, if they want to. We already have a large number of them there that will be indexed in our database (in other words, we're not planning on moving them), so if you prefer to post a tutorial in the forum, we'd rather have it there, than not at all. Although we have expressed a preference, we don't feel that strongly about it one way or another, and don't plan to make any "rules" along those lines. So no worries, it's all good.