Stingray Cell Phone Case

This little Cell Phone Case to hang on your belt, was made by Eric R.  He used the same effect he uses with the seams on his gun cases to frame the inlay of the stingray.

Imperial Lace Rocks!

I finished this handle for a modeling tool Jason R made for me a few years ago.

I know this blog is about leather and this lace is not leather, but wow!  this lace blows your mind away - it works like a dream, it lays itself down snug, it comes in a pure white (and three other colors), it is super strong and it is any day as good as kangaroo lace to braid with.

The knot is a six bight knot with a gaucho interweave.

HiFi cover

Early in the 1980's a blind friend asked me to make a cover for her Hifi to protect it from dust.  And here is what I came up with.

The next photo shows details of the design I used.  It has a few interesting facts behind it.

It was the very early days of PC's and the bank where I worked had two Apples to do their graphic work with.  I spent my lunch times playing there and making slides for the IT Director's presentations.  This design was one of the few cliparts that were available (not on the web - this was held on a 100 Kbyte floppy).

I immediately liked the design - Amanda had told me that for her, her whole world were inside her, because she could not see the world around her that we experience as a shell around us.  And see, the design is a globe inside the outlines of a head!

Horse Brasses

Long ago in a land far away, a very British sounding lady asked me to make a strap for her horse brasses (pre Google / internet days).   I had no idea what these should look like and she did not really know either.   So I completely dreamed these up.  But she liked them...!

More detail:

Original Human Figure Project

In October 2005, in this blog, I showed the restoration of the big human figure carving I had done.  (You can see it HERE)   Now I have uncovered the photos showing how I did the project in the first place.   Unfortunately it was before free digital photography, so I only have these few photos.

First is the start of the tooling:

The project was tooled on vegtan Blue Wildebeest leather.

And this was with the figure dyed completely:

...and then mounted and framed with a thin strip of leather - at the time I did not want any framing to take away from the carving itself.

This piece traveled 8,000 miles and underwent a lot of 'abuse', which was why I had to restore it in 2005.  So this again, is what it looked like after the restoration:

 

Menu Covers

I made these in about 1981 for the National Parks Service in Tsitsikama - The flowers are all indigenous to the area.

I later heard that these were stolen a few months after I left the National Park (I had worked there for six months to wait for my final semester at University.)

A few projects from long ago

I unearthed some old photo albums and found these pictures of some of the projects I did about thirty years ago!

This is a hand guard for ten pin bowling.  I think the cutting design was from an old Leathercrafter magazine, but it was my own first rather successfulness attempt at a tooling design.

I was in the Voortrekkers, the South African equivalent of the Scouts, and in 1981 I made these quivers that carried messages all over South Africa to a celebratory conference for the organization's 50th year.

Skull on a Book

I am binding some magazines for the local guild and decided to have fun with the carving of the covers.  the topmost magazine in this volume had a picture of a skull covered in leather so I turned it into a picture that I could carve.

After all the carving was done, I covered the design with two layers of Super Sheen and the back ground with two layers of Block-out.

After it had dried, you cannot see where the Super Sheen and Block-out had been applied.

Then I covered the whole picture with Eco-Flo High-Liter and quickly wiped the excess off with a damp cloth.  Now the difference between the parts resisted with Super Sheen and with Block-out became very prominent.  It turned out exactly as I wanted, so I was well pleased.

I followed the instructions in Tony Lair's book about getting a Sheridan style finish to a carving after being inspired by Mike Pederson.  I will see if I can get a photo of the check book Mike had done in the same way.

A Doodle

I had to teach someone a masterclass in tooling and this was the piece I demonstrated techniques with.  I don't know what to do with it now....

New Hatband done

Here is the completed hatband - now to find a buyer!