Floral Corners

[particle]

Hello everyone - I just completed my third official tooling exercise. My first was simply a single flower cropped out of the Tandy kit for beginners that my sister-in-law let me borrow. My second was a basket weave on a holster, and now this is my third. I would appreciate some honest feedback.

I'm still figuring out the A, B, C's of leatherworking - for instance, I applied the gum trigagnangugmgnugmm stuff (is that how you spell it...?) to the edges before I dyed the leather, which affected the penetration on the top grain and I had to apply multiple coats around the perimeter in a failed attempt to even it out. It's still not perfectly even, but this was a scrap piece of leather to begin with (note the tracing marks in a few places - this was an area of the hide where I had my holster template facing the wrong side out when I traced the pattern).

And the seed area on the top-right flower - I take it I was not supposed to swivel-knife cut the circle around the seed area, even though there was a cut line indicated on the Tandy Floral Corner pattern?

Lastly, here's my humble work bench. It serves as my tooling station, reloading station, gun cleaning area and also as a general hide-out space. My current granite piece is simply a granite cutting board that came with a piece of kitchen furniture. I hope to get my hands on a kitchen sink sized cut out that should measure about 3-4cm thick. The wall directly behind the camera is completely lined with cabinets with a solid work surface on top, and peg board running the length of the wall. Unfortunately, like most garages, it's covered with 'other' stuff most of the time.

[tattoosbyjay]

i think it looks great to me goodjob

[bex DK]

I am impressed by your depth! That is something I have trouble with.

You may way to consider fading out the matting towards the center. (the background stamp or whatever you used to change the texture). It might look better with a less sharp transition.

But that's an idea I get from some of the tutorials I've read on this site. The carving links from the main page give some great ideas.