DakiSK

Got this busted jewelry box at a thrift store the other day, don't so much like the look but it has a nice shape and the lock still works. So I've decided to cover it in leather- problem is I have no idea how. Uphostery tacks, I guess? Do I sew the leather around edges & corners? I know I want the top to be a piece of tooled leather, and some padding inside the sections. I'd also like to do something with the hole in the bottom where the music tab used to be- I'd rather not cover the bottom in leather so I'd like some idea of how to incorporate it to have some kind of function. No idea what. My expertise has pretty much been limited to wristbands and pouches at this point... so any pointers much appreciated! Sorry for the bad pictures, but my laptop's webcam is the only camera I have at the moment...

Well, looks like my best bet would be to buy locally. Which is cool- I could be tooling leather as early as tomorrow afternoon! Now, which tools would you recommend for a beginner? I'm thinking swivel knife, some kind of embossing tool, a stamp or two, one of the stitch-markers and an awl. Would that be good to start off with, or are there another couple more I should get as well?

Figure this is as good a place as any to post this.... Anyway, just about ready to buy my first leatherworking tools, and wondering just how I should go about it. I figured I should get opinions from some people with a bit of experience under their (no doubt hand-crafted) belt. My first thought is to buy the Deluxe Leathercraft Kit from Tandy (the kit), which would cost me about $115. My other option is to buy from the leather place in town. They ARE Tandy registered, so I could get the same tools there as I could online, which means no shipping, but they don't have that specific kit on hand so if I wanted that one I'd have to order out anyway. Option 1 gives me the advantage of having a full kit with instructions, tools, and small bits of leather to get me started before I go off buying whole hides to mess up on. The drawback being, I can't actually see from the picture which tools I would be getting. I mean, if I squint and think it logically it looks like there's... a swivel knife, some kind of embossing tool, and guessing from the mallet and cell phone cover that third one could be a basketweave stamp. And then there's these yellow square things I have no idea what they could be, and I'm thinking... couldn't I just get those tools myself and grab a couple of scraps from the basket in there, get a couple of those cheap PDF files and do the same things for half the cost? Which leads me to option 2. There's no shipping charges, I can get everything instantly, and I can actually select a tool, hold it, and study it before deciding to buy it. They have a scrap bin, which I would probably be rifling through anyway rather than buy skins online, and I could get a more detailed and in-depth description of everything rather than the stale bare minimum I get on the site. Drawback being, all the individual kits included in the one are very expensive on their own, so if I ever wanted to make them I would have to shell out quite a bit to do so. Of course, that could also be a good thing considering I'd never be able to get rid of the finished products..... Vegan family, and all. I guess my main question is just: IS the Deluxe kit worth it? Has anyone else gotten it in the past, and would it be a better investment to just go ahead and get it than to fiddlefoot around with getting the tools individually and locally?