Daes

Hello everyone! So I've started working with leather a couple of months ago, due to my job schedule things are fairly sporadic on when I can go out and sell. My mother and I have had an interest in selling/making things for a few years now and this year things have finally started to shift to allow us to both be to do it with more dedication. Looking around online I've found a few flea markets in my area that we'll be able to go to on my days off. My biggest thing right now though is that I set aside money from my paycheck every week to cover the cost of my leather goods. Eventually, we're wanting to turn my leatherwork and her necklace made into a full-time business. Starting off though, I'm struggling to find good things to practice on/sell locally to help build up money. My goal right now isn't to make money from my leather work, but to get it to where I no longer need to keep putting money into it from my paychecks. Effectively to make it self-sustaining and able to cover the cost of materials/resources until a later time when we're able to make it full time. The things that I really enjoy making relate to pouches and bags, I've been focusing on drawstring bags right now, but I plan to move up to larger items once I can afford larger hides and material, but I'm wondering if there's anything else anyone can think of that is fairly simple to start off with and could become a staple item until I'm able to make niche items.

Thank you everyone! all this information is wonderful, I think leather carving is the next thing on my list to learn. Been practicing with drawstring bags and decent with them. As for material, I figured it would be best to just save up for full hides

@bikermutt07 THank you! Im actually half an hour west of Charlotte, out in a small town called Gastonia, I will definitely look into his work. And thank you @chrisash and @zuludog I will definitely take that information into account and poke around Tandy more as well.

Hey guys! So, right now I'm in a bit of a spot, having only recently gotten into leatherworking months ago, I've become self-taught and still lacking a lot of information. Excluding what I can find online. Eventually, when time and space permits it I plan to have a workshop to work in, but right now I'm limited to roughly an 8-foot square space to keep my tools, workbench, and leather projects. The biggest thing I'm looking for is tips and tricks on not only getting started in leatherworking but growing into te community online and locally. I live in a small town in North Carolina and sadly the nearest place that I can find good leather supply in person is an hour away at the Tandy leather Outlet. I'm hoping to learn from experienced people like those here on solutions that maybe you've used to solve limited space and more efficient ways of being able to work. Right now leatherworking is a hobby and really I'd like to try it out as a small business on the side. There are still many things I'm trying to learn, like the different leather weights and what's good to make what, so far I've been fairly decent at making drawstring bags with some very thin leather I found on Amazon and saddle stitching.

I shall as soon as I get a decent camera! and thank you!

My name is Daes, I'm young, 20, going on 21 and I've recently taken up leatherworking after coming across some handmade pouches inside of a gem shop in my lil ole town. I always thought that this was a vastly complex artform but one I started to get my hands in it, it's turned out to be fair more fun then I thought it'd be originally. I'm mostly self-taught in the sense of reading books and watching videos, but I'd love to get critiques es from people once I'm able to post some pictures and hopfully videos of how I work so I can learn to improve myself.