I wanted to wait on posting this entry until my brother got his present, because this was supposed to be for his birthday (...way back in May...) but since he never got it, I will post this and make him another one. .....Ack! There was a long letter in that box, too! T.T I am saddened....
My brother cartoons, and someday while being awesome and English-y he will become an even more accomplished cartoonist and wit; I look forward to the day. (As soon as he gets his web comic off the ground, I will be putting a plug here! : D ) For his birthday present, he asked me to make him a case for his cartooning pencils, hence this project : )
Below, find ye the information I have divulged.....
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| Front View, (with tiny furry buffalo at right) |
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| Flap Open |
This is how it turned out (of course). My brother is very fond of medieval things and things with a medieval feel, and he likes dragons especially. I had wanted to tool a dragon for the front, and was tossing around different design ideas when my husband piped up with the idea for this particular dragon. My brother enjoys Skyrim very much, and the emblem for that game is this dragon, but it's supposed to be made out of cast metal, or something. Leather is not metal. Either I would try to make it look metal by painting it silver, or I would leave it be, and I tried the paint. My husband is of the opinion that I should have left it, but it works : )
My brother was going to put pencils in the case, and I wanted it to be easy for him to open and close, so I decided to use a magnet instead of a snap or a latch, which would be either too hard to close, or too bulky (the latch might catch on something in his bag). The magnet clasp has two prongs on the backs of the mail and female parts; you have to put slots in the leather for where the prongs will go and then fold them over to secure them. I hid that part on the flap by doubling the leather and only putting the prongs through the bottom layer. The dragon concho on the front went through both layers, though I would have preferred hiding the screw. The concho post was too thick for it to like only going through one layer; it would have twisted a lot.
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| Side View Latigo Lace, under over stitching |
The leather for the body (the brown stuff) is made from some scraps of "stoned oil cowhide" which Tandy sells (though not the scraps, usually a whole side). It has a really nice soft feel to it, and shows scuffs, which can give it a rugged look. Also, I used some awesome discontinued latigo lace that I found in the store and bought a spool of. When I make another of these cases, I will oil it, first, though, just to help it feel more supple (the poor thing is old, after all....). My coworker had a brilliant insight that really made the project doable. When lacing, we need to have access to the holes, and for lacing sides that overlap like this instead of having flush edges, the needle has to be able to go in and out of the space the case encloses. I hope that made sense. What this meant for this project was that I realized that I couldn't possible finish the piece if I started at the top and worked down to the bottom and back up again....I could sew one piece to the gusset, but sewing the other piece to the gusset would involve me fitting my hands into a space I could only barely get my hands into when complete and manipulating a needle through holes that didn't actually want to line up....especially around the corners. Not happening. I was in the middle of trying to think of how to start from the bottom and work up when my coworker pipes up with "Use two needles!". Brilliant, thought I. Which it was! I cut the length of lace I needed and threaded a lacing needle onto each end, then ran one needle through the hole at the bottom I needed to start at and centered the piece on the lace. This let me work up the sides one hole at a time on each side, and gave me room to work around both the corners.
I was exceedingly grateful, and will use this trick again.
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| Top Flap front view, Dragon Concho |
(Google is being strange, so I can't put text between the above picture and the one just before it....)
Oh well.
(.....Bahaha! Fixed it ^.^ )
Tandy has some pretty cool celtic/dragon inspired conchos, and this is one of my favorites. I am waiting for the time Tandy figures out how to make a converting piece to make conchos into magnet claps, though : )
This guy was fun to tool. He was a little annoying to trace out, though.....
I wish I could have found a way to set him as an inlay, but I didn't want to make the case too thick and I didn't want to make the inside profile anything but smooth. I kind of want to make him a little smaller, next time, so that I can put the stitches on background instead of on the dragon, himself. I probably needed another coat of silver (you can faintly see the leather showing through and reading as pink), but I really don't want the depth of the tooling to be obscured by too thick a layer of color.
Now, I tried to make this thing look like it might possibly have come from a medieval time period....I am not too certain I pulled that off.....Certainly I doubt they would have had silver paint, but I really wanted to try to make it look like it was actually metal. Should I go for a thong and knot approach for the catch system, next time? (magnets are easier, but they certainly don't belong in medieval times >.< ) I guess I could try to learn how to knot/weave the loop and knot....I could use some artificial sinew : ) I really don't want it to be too bulky.
Ideas? Questions? I could really go for some peanuts, here.....
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your feedback : )
