Skyrim Emblem Pencil Case

Hello again!  It's been quite some time since I could post something interesting; my work's schedule picked up quite a bit and I haven't had time to do anything notable....I did mail out this project to my brother back in July or the first week of August, but USPS has been dumb and it never got to him....I shall have to make another.

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.....

Front View, (with tiny furry buffalo at right)

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.

                                                        

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.                       

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 : )

Steampunk Custom Purse is Done! : D

It's finished, and I have the go ahead from my mom to post about it before she sees it (I need to send it to her in the mail).

She's going to be wearing it as part of her costume at this year's San Japan; I have such a cool mom!  http://www.san-japan.org/  <--here lies a link to the convention's website.

She and my brother went last year, and she loved seeing all the adults dressing up in steampunk, so she decided to make herself a costume and go this year in style.  When she told me that, I wanted to make a purse for her to match, and here it is.

Grapevines Steampunk Purse

Behold my first steampunk project!  The base of it was the Pioneer Handbag kit from Tandy, but everything else is my idea.  She wanted something nature-y, even though it was steampunk, because she wanted to pretend she was a naturalist, so we decided on grapevines since they mean so much to her : )

Front View

The kit comes with the leather pre-punched, but it's completely plain so you can put whatever you want on it.  The kit also comes with the Latigo lacing you see, three brass rings (economy, though, not solid brass), a nice solid brass 1" halter buckle for the strap, and some rapid rivets.  I bought some nicer double cap rivets, though, since I will not use rapid rivets if I can help it.....they just aren't as strong.  I also bought the bag clasp here, since the kit doesn't come with a clasp and it adds to the feel of the bag.  The conchos in the middle are bezeled gear conchos that Tandy sells, as well, meaning they are flat and have a hole in the middle to put a rivet through it for attachment.  I used amber colored crystal rivets to match Mom's costume, but Tandy has lots more colors available.

Inside of purse

The backside of vegetable tanned leather like this stuff is usually pretty rough; at least, it's rougher than Mom is accustomed to in the bags she usually buys, so I offered to get some pig skin suede to line it in.  She loved the idea, since this color will match her red silk shoes perfectly.....ummm...the color isn't pinkish....it's actually a very nice rich red, but though the color of the bag itself came out great in the pictures, the suede was always hard to capture....At any rate, I cut out the suede pieces to match the kit pieces and glued them down (veerrrrrry carefully....my goodness, it took longer than the tooling took!), re-punched the holes, and then constructed the thing.  I ended up buying some economy brass dees for the strap-to-purse connection you see here, since the rings were not fitting once I had lined the gussets.

Back View

See!  You can see the olive tree leather mark in the bottom left-hand corner ^.^  It's the first piece of mine that has it : )

The color was fun to get, but it did take a little while, of course, since it was two layers.  I like using the Gel Antiques from Tandy, since they really do a nice job of bringing out tooling.  For this one, I did a few base coats of Saddle Tan, and then a coat of Dark Brown.  I sealed it with Acrylic Resolene, so it would have good water resistance.

Myself with the bag

Now, I don't have a nice camera, but my co-worker does, so she helped me out and loaned me her camera; you'll have to imagine fun steampunk clothing.  You can see the size of the bag and the coloration much better, here, but also realize that this was a pretty cloudy day.

This bag took a lot of time, and after crunching numbers if someone wanted me to make this same exact one for them I would charge $250.  I mean, sure, the colors could be different, the crystal rivet colors could be different, and the hardware could be changed out to silver, though the halter buckle is still solid brass...and the pig suede could be a different color.  The things that would be the same and that constitute the cost would be the shape of the bag, the fact that it IS lined with pig suede, the swing bag clasp, the number of conchos and rivets, the number of rings used, the latigo lacing, and the tooling pattern.  If any of those were changed, the price would change subsequently.  I believe my e-mail is available through this blog, but if not, comment and I'll make it available!  I'd rather not give out my phone number, but I'm quite alright with e-mail or even skype calls if that were more helpful : )  I'll do my best to be thorough in determining what you want.  Also, realize that the prices I get at Tandy by working there are about half the regular cost for these things......

It does take a lot of time to make, so I would need a few weeks to get the timing right : ) (once you start tooling, it's best to finish it soon, so it will look uniform across the picture....leather is weird.)  There are still Pioneer Handbags in the company, though they are getting discontinued.  I also made a pattern from the kit I got and could cut out my own leather if I really had to.

Thanks for reading!  I enjoyed making it even if I had to set up a fan to keep the contact cement fumes out of my face >.<

Projects to Date Part Three: Bigger Projects.... O.o

This next post is dedicated to the belt I made for my husband.  It wasn't the first belt I made, but like an idiot I didn't get a picture of the first one....the guy I made it for was in a hurry and whisked it away before I could get a picture T.T

Celtic Belt  Mid-stage, color not complete

I pressed the pattern outline into the leather for this one, like the flowers in the previous coasters.  Tandy has these neat "craftaids" that can be great for practicing with.  The idea is that these sheets of plastic have raised plastic ridges on them in the shape of the pattern, and when the leather is wet, you can press the ridges down and they make a light impression of the pattern.  You can then cut the pattern deeper with the swivel knife and do your tooling : )  I found it mighty helpful with this kind of repetitive thing.  

Celtic Belt Mid-stage close up

Here again we have the two-tone effect by sealant : )  It turned out a little....brightly...though....My husband looked at it when I brought it home and said it wasn't bad, but he felt like he was wearing lederhosen, so I had to think of what to do to darken it a bit.  I had already put something like 14-15 hours into tooling the darn thing, so I wasn't about to just make another!  (btw, it took so long because I cut every line, beveled every line, and backgrounded inside all those little pockets of enclosed space.....my arms ached).

Celtic Belt Complete!

I had a small strip of leather from the original piece I cut the belt from (yes, I cut it myself!  I didn't start with a belt blank), so I tooled a little loop to represent part of the pattern style, sealed the knot with the acrylic resolene, and put the saddle tan antique over it so it would look like the belt I had in the first two pictures.  I did this a few times on the strip so I would have several samples, and then I started applying the other gel antiques to see what would happen.  The sealant was so strong, though, that the yellow never did fade!  Eventually I bought a bottle of Deglazer (super strong nail polish remover, essentially), wiped it over the sealed part, and put the gel antiques over that.  That actually did something, and the Mahogany antique looked best, so I went with that to get the complete belt ^.^  Though, eventually I made a trophy buckle for him, too, to match; it's a little easier on the leather since the belt tip isn't being forced over and under so many things.

Because the darn thing took so long, if someone wanted me to make this belt for them (it could be colored a little differently), tooling and all, I'd have to charge $180 to cover labor and materials.  That would include the matching trophy buckle, since that was easy.  The buckle on its own would be $20 because the metal backing is something like $6 and the leather insert is another $3-4.  I would like to charge more for the belt, since it was such a pain to do all that beveling, but I usually don't go higher than around $10/hr, for now.....if my time becomes more scarce I may have to change that....But I would let people know : )  This belt was for a size 32" waist, I think?  Maybe a size 29"....if I was asked to do a much larger or smaller belt, I would adjust the price to reflect the difference in time required to do the tooling : )


Also!  If you have questions about leather or tooling, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer it : )

Projects to Date Part Two: Painted Leather

Hallo once more....we meet again, whoever you may be; I hope you learn something interesting as you read this post.

I made some coasters for a friend's birthday present, and after tooling them my husband agreed that they could look really neat if we painted them, since they involved cartoon characters (which never look quite right if they aren't in the same colors they appear in, normally).

Maple Leaf, the hardest one to paint....

Believe it or not, this leaf gave me so much trouble!  I loved tooling it, but I thought I would be super cool and make the silly thing green AND red, like a real live Fall leaf.....The result was a scary concoction that reminded me (for some bizarre reason) of what Poison Ivy's leaves might look like if she were growing her plants....it was green in the middle, and red on the edges, but the paint dried so fast that I couldn't do any blending.  I'm still working on that T.T  In the end, I got tired of it and painted the whole thing a few layers of white, and just made it all red.  It was interesting, though, that painting the dark veins over the white layer first made it easier to give the impression of veins after the red layer; I didn't have to paint as much brown vein as I thought I would.

Lesson of the day for newbie painters!  If you have to scrap a paint job, try painting layers of white over it until it's actually white and not a pale version of the colors beneath it.  It's like getting a clean slate, even if the paint gets a little thick.

Sun Flower?  I thought of it as a real world version of Mario's Fire Flower ^.^

 This one was cool.  The fading worked, woohoo!

Buttercup!  "Wuv, twoo wuv..."

 For all the plants, I tried to use tri-colors to get a shading effect.  Now, I've never had a single painting or drawing class in my life....I'm a poor poor child trying to get by on her own, so you awesome art people who grasp this a whole lot better, please look with mercy.  The idea of the tri-color thing is that I would have a base color (take the green leaves in this one), like the medium green, then I would mix a slightly lighter and slightly darker green and paint the darker green in the valleys (tooling makes it so much easier to picture this, by the way!), and the lighter green would get brushed lightly on the ridges that would catch light.  They needed to be faded a bit into the medium green to make them seem more realistic, but you can do this with any part of the drawing.

Nintendo's Mushroom from Mario

 These next three are like the Demon Hunter luggage tag: I don't feel comfortable actually selling stuff with copyrighted designs on it.  I'm pretty sure I would need written permission from the companies for that, and I have no clue how long that would take or how likely it would be for them to grant it.  I could look into it, sometime, though....

Cactuar from Final Fantasy!  Oh the pain!

Now, you may find it odd that I have these six coasters as one set.....My friend, however, is a fellow nerd, and these three cartoons are from video games that he plays or has played often, and the Cactuar in particular has been a source of much angst for him.  I felt he should have three "respectable" coasters, at least, but then these three other coasters are plants, too, though of a more amusing sort.

Deku Baba from Zelda: Ocarina of Time

This guy was just about as hard to paint as the maple leaf!  It wasn't quite as sharp as I would have liked, but the fading turned out ok, and I had a lot of fun crouching over this with my glasses off so I could get the details right.  You have no idea how much I missed my lovely tiny brush that is several states away, now.....I should just buy a new one.

Thanks again to those who actually find this interesting enough to read!  I kind of wish Google would tell me who is reading this, but apparently 17 people saw the first post, and 2 saw the second one O.o  I'm kind of astounded.

Work to Date Part One

Hallo again to whomever may actually come across this blog in its (very) fledgling state.

I'm going to load up the pictures I have of the things I've made so far!  I've also finished the really big project I mentioned in the first post, but I will have nice pictures of that a little later.  I have to borrow a nice camera T.T.....

Demon Hunter Leather Luggage Tag, tooled on a kit from the Tandy Leather Factory

This is a luggage tag I tooled for my brother.  No, I don't feel like I can sell work like this, but it is an example of what I could do if you asked me to!  Yes, that is all hand-done.  I didn't cut the parts out for this, but that piece of leather was plain when I bought it.  I like tooling, aka carving shapes and pictures into leather.

Sheridan Wild Rose Style

Letter Stamps with border, no color, only sealant

This was a very simple present I made for someone, and was my first time drawing my own design instead of tracing something onto the leather.  This sign was meant to hang outside the gentleman's workshop, since he had a label for everything else.  JD got me started on leather soon after I started working at a Tandy; he's a great guy : )

Something to note if you're interested: the last two projects have two tones in the colors.  The tag had a light and dark brown, and the rose had a saddle tan and a yellow-ish tone for the pollen.  This isn't because I used two colors or painted it that way, I only used one color!  However, I sealed up the parts that are lighter now before applying the color, so the color didn't seep in as deeply and left that lighter color.  As a note, I like the rich saddle tan color (esp. underneath the dark brown or mahogany antiques), but if you seal it before the color goes on, you get a YELLOW.  No joke.  Just keep that in mind if you ever start doing this yourself ^.^

Starting Up!

As some of you may know, I've been picking up leather working/tooling since October of 2011 and I've really been enjoying it.  I've already custom made some things for pay, and now that I'm working on a really major project for my mom I felt it was time I starting marking these projects with a stamp of some sort to identify my handiwork.  I also have no idea where someone may see something I've made, and just in case they want me to make something for them, I want it to be possible to get in touch with me without my writing a phone number on my work.  Hence, this blog!

Unfortunately my last name is now a little too common for me to try using it as a marker for my work, so I've chosen the name "Olive Tree Leather", which I will be inscribing on my pieces.  If you want to know why, just read Romans 11 : )   

(I tried just making the impression with my stylus, but it wasn't very easy to read, so I put pen in the grooves.  It won't be so obvious once I've colored the piece with the dark colors I usually use, and for natural pieces I can sign on the back where it won't be obtrusive)

I've never kept a blog, before, and I'm not really sure who is going to find this, but for starters I'm going to be putting my leather project pictures I've compiled thus far onto this account, since they are all on facebook, now.  I've been blessed with so many artistic friends and I hope I can amuse you as much as you have amused me with your work! ^.^