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 >.<