First Attempt At Carving Leather

[srtboise]

I'm working on a project for my wife and she wanted a very specific theme tooled into an accent piece of leather. She wants a dragonfly on a flower. I have never tooled/carved leather before so here is my first attempt...

This started as my first few test cuts with a swivel knife and it evolved into this. This is completely free hand, no pattern was used.

This is my first try at a flower. I used a pattern I found online that I modified slightly.

Here is my first attempt at the entire theme. I thought it was going rather well until I overworked the dragonfly's head and lost too much detail. I am calling this another practice piece.

I would love some feedback and criticism as I would like to learn from those more experienced than myself.

Thanks

steve

[RoyalLeatherDesigns]

Steve,

Did you case your leather. I don't know if you did or didn't but you get better impressions when you do. If you didn't try doing it and you'd be amazed. Yesterday I did some tooling myself and had my leather casing for two days I get the leather really wet then stuff it in a drawer and wait for it to dry some like half a day, the leather is still cold and barely getting its color back but still to wet to tool. I then stuff it in a wooden box lined with galvanized metal and leave it the for days. When I started tooling on the leather every impression I made was outstanding this might not be the correct way of doing it but it certainly works for me. I read somewhere that people used to make this wood boxes and lined them with galvanized metal to case their leather so I did it and it works perfectly. I used to put the leather on ice chests and ziplock bags but I did not get the results as I do now you should try it. It takes some time to get the timing correctly but you'll get it. I forgot a piece of leather on the box for days and it was still prefect for tooling it seems the longer you leave it in there without it drying the better tooling results you'll get. Good Luck!

Ralph