Leather Picture Frame

[MattTheHat]

Tooling looks great. Wish I could tool flowers

You can if you practice. I think you'd be amazed at how quickly you'll learn. My first few attempts were pretty ugly to me, but each encouraging to some degree. I probably only have 50 hours tooling experience so far. After about 15 hours (I'd work for about two hours per session, so this took maybe three weeks in my spare time) I saw tremendous improvement and was encouraged to keep practicing. I saw noticeable improvement after each subsequent session. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I never thought I would see "acceptable" results in this little time.

I found showing my practice work to my spouse and non-leatherworking friends gave me loads of encouragement. I got all kinds of awesome comments from my very first practice piece and each and every one that I showed thereafter. They always seemed to look at me like I was a bit crazy when I mentioned all my mistakes.

I still have loads to learn, and I'm sure many folks with more experience will look at my work and cringe, but I'm more than satisfied with my results so far. I've also gotten some very good advice on how to overcome a few different issues here on the forum.

-Matt