Contributing Member ClayB Posted July 26, 2008 Contributing Member Report Posted July 26, 2008 Wolvenstien asked me about another thread that must have been lost in the crash last year. So here is some of it again. At a shop in Rapid City last fall my wife saw some really neat leather purses with leaves imprinted into the leather. Actually, on the purses, the leaves seemed to be raised off the leather. The guy that did these had a website, but I didn't seem to save the info on it. Here is another one that I think Kate posted that has similar stuff. Well, my wife and I decided to try and see if we could do something like this. We collected some leaves out of the yard, cased some leather, and tried to impress the leaves into the leather. My wife does scrapbooking and rubber stamping and it seems that people that are into those crafts need as many cool tools as leather crafters do. She has a few different machines that are used to emboss paper and she thought one of them would work well for this. It's called a Cuttlebug and you can see more info on it here First thing we learned was that putting fresh leaves through this machine isn't that great of an idea. The machine has enough pressure to squeeze out whatever moisture is in the leaf and makes a gooey mess. We happened to have a bunch of dried leaves here in the house so we tried those and they worked really well. \ The biggest problem with the Cuttlebug machine is that you can only put a piece of leather about 5 inches wide through it. Kate did some experimenting and found out that you can also get pretty good results using a press. (I think I should live next door to Kate) Later on when my wife wanted to make a larger book cover out of leather and put some leaves on it we had to figure out a way to get the impressions into it. What worked this time was to set the leather on the cement floor, place the leaves on top, cover that with a piece of 1/8 inch thick plastic, and then press it in with a rolling pin. I had to use quite a bit of pressure on the rolling pin, but it worked pretty good. I was surprised that getting good results trying this wasn't all that hard, and the detail you can get out of a leaf is really impressive. Here are some of the things we made using this technique. Quote ClayB Badlands Leather Art blog Badlands Leather Art Website
Contributing Member UKRay Posted July 26, 2008 Contributing Member Report Posted July 26, 2008 (edited) That is beautiful stuff... This is kinda spooky because I was talking to Luke about that missing post just a couple of days ago. I have just acquired an old bookbinder's press and Luke suggested that it ought to work well for this technique. If you simply need to squash the leaves into the leather then this thing is made for the job. These lovely old presses are fairly common on eBay and don't always make a lot of money. The important thing is that they come down level... some don't! Edited July 26, 2008 by UKRay Quote "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps" Ray Hatley www.barefootleather.co.uk
Ambassador Luke Hatley Posted July 26, 2008 Ambassador Report Posted July 26, 2008 O K COUSIN.........you have the press now let us see the embossed leaves in the leather. i have a good idea that your wife would like to have a project made . Quote Luke
Ambassador leatheroo Posted July 27, 2008 Ambassador Report Posted July 27, 2008 great stuff clay....the mind races with all the things that could be pressed into leather.... Quote "]http://leatheroo.blogspot
Members CitizenKate Posted July 27, 2008 Members Report Posted July 27, 2008 Those are so nice! I'm definitely going to have to do some more playing with that idea. Kate Quote
MADMAX22 Posted July 27, 2008 Report Posted July 27, 2008 Looks great but in the first ones it looks like the leaves are rasied away from the leather. Is that so or am I looking at it wrong. Still looks aewsome. Quote
Contributing Member ClayB Posted July 29, 2008 Author Contributing Member Report Posted July 29, 2008 Yes, in the original photos, the leaves are actually raised above the leather. There was a website for the guy that made these, but I cant find it. In his brochure he said that he made "stamps" of some sort in the shape of the different leaves and I think he said he had thousands of them. They would have to be pretty big "stamps". What we did wasn't the same, but we were happy with it. Quote ClayB Badlands Leather Art blog Badlands Leather Art Website
Members whtdove3 Posted July 31, 2008 Members Report Posted July 31, 2008 I found this http://www.rusticspirit.com/leatherleaves/, but it's hard to tell from the photo if it's raised or not. Awful pretty, though. Quote
Members whtdove3 Posted July 31, 2008 Members Report Posted July 31, 2008 I'm home now and had some time to dig around a little more on this. I'm very fascinated by this design and I think I found the artist who does this (C.L. Whiting). His website said over the years he developed over 5000 tools in various leaf patterns to come up with this method of raised leaf leatherwork. Quote
Members CitizenKate Posted July 31, 2008 Members Report Posted July 31, 2008 That's at http://www.clwhiting.com/, for anyone who wants to go check it out. Kate Quote
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