Quick Flowers

Here's a neat little flower design I came up with recently. It is the type of flower I've seen used mainly on Nature Tand projects, but it looks great on regular leather as well. I've compiled some pictures with a few instructions on how to do it; it's really quite simple. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting use of the tools!

New Leather Stain?

Well, I'm currently testing a new stain I just got: it's called Minwax Gel Stain. Although it is designed for wood staining, it seems to work pretty well for leather as well. What I'm looking for (as I have been on and off for quite a while) is a stain of some sort that gives the look that I want (I think it's called the Sheridan style. . .) with the flexibility that I like. I want the leather to be able to bend in half without the finish peeling or chipping off in any way! I'm definitely certain it's possible. . . It just has to be!

Oak-Eagle Finished

Well, I finished this about two weeks ago (just never really felt like posting, though). It looked nice (-ish), but I got kind of tired of it because it took so long. I guess I should learn to go faster with things. . .

The eagle is colored with stain, the oak leaves with yellow and green dye, and the feather and acorns were painted (as I don't have very many colors of dye). Of course, most of the background and the basket weave is colored with stain too. I finished it first with watered-down Tan Kote (Fiebing's) and then, because I wanted it to be water-proof as well, with a layer of RTC (Bee Natural finish is the best!)

By the way, I think this picture is a little blurry, which makes it look slightly better than the real version. . . Oh well.

Keen Leather

Ah, I never usually post here. . . Oh well :-)

Here are two pictures of Commander Keen carved in leather (before and after painting). As usual, the picture looks better than the real thing (in my opinion). It's not perfect, but I'm actually pretty pleased with how it turned out: I like the eyes best. The completed project has a piece of suede leather glued to the back.

One thing I know for sure is, dye is a better way to color leather than paint. Paint will smear around and build up, whereas dye soaks in evenly (if applyed correctly).

BTW, there is a forum (PCKF) for talking about the DOS game Commander Keen, but the place is quite dead (not much to talk about Keen anymore).

Oak-Eagle Work In Progress

Here is a picture of one of my current projects (approximately 8 1/2 x 11 inches). I believe most of the artwork was designed by Mr. Thomas Anthony Lair (a.k.a. Tony Lair) of Tandy Leather Factory. All I did was determine where the eagle, oakleaves, and acorns would be places and how they would sit. Now that it's all carved and tooled, I'm beginning to dye and finish it.

Unfortunately, the picture makes the piece look better than it really does, but oh well. . . Another thing about it is that it has terrible undercut where it should not. The feather is supposed to be undercut, but the oak leaves and such are not (but much of it is :-( ).

Swivel Knife Undercut

Recently I have noticed that I have a terrible habit of tilting the swivel knife while cutting and causing terrible undercut. What is undercut? Well, it's what happens when you hold the swivel knife improperly while cutting. Left undercut results from tilting the knife to the right, causing the cut to tilt to the left. Similarly, right undercut results from tilting the knife to the left, causing the cut to tilt to the right. (See [crude] illustration below.) Undercutting makes the cut difficult to tool, and the overall appearance isn't quite right.

If anyone (haha, no one even reads this I bet) could give me some hints on how to avoid this mistake (I accidently do it without even noticing until it's too late), please post a comment, and/or email me (leather d0t stuff at gmail.com).

Now if only I were as skilled as Jim Linnell, Tony Lair, Peter Main, or Hidehandler. . .

Key Fob

Here's a picture of a key fob I made recently. What I like about it is that I managed to color it slightly similar to how it is featured on the package (I did mess up a bit though). I used green and black dyes, an orange Crayola marker, Super Shene, and brown stain to coler it; and with Fiebings Acrylic Resolene as a finish, it should be able to stand daily use pretty well too.