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 : )