The start of a very fun project ...

Ah, no rules, I decided. I want to make a bag to carry stuff in - to
work or to a picnic or to stay overnight or just to carry stuff.

The stamping is all just empty headed doodling ... just fun.

A Set of Black Saddle Bags

This was a paid-for project. Black is not my favourite color for
leather. It hides good carving, it is difficult to prevent the dye
from bleeding and it makes it difficult to see detail of the work,
like when you are stitching.

Ron's Leggin's

These are leggings a friend made. They have very many names: leggings, botas, bolinas, half-breeds, to name few.

 

 

 

 

Ready to sell!

This photo gives you an idea of the size of this piece. This was very satisfying to do.

 

Square stamps

A friend gave me two steel bars - plain square steel bars - to stamp with. On their own, they just gave me squares - but combine them with Johan's Discovery Lined Triangle! Wow! A whole new world of possibilities appear!

 

Color applied

 

What a relief when I had the figure all done! It went well and I will still go and have a look at it again to see if any touch up will be necessary. I was so tempted to not do the background, but I stuck to it and so far I am very pleased with the result!

 

Coloring an Anatomy

Coloring starts. It is quite a slow process. I use Eco-Flo dyes for their color fastness. They are waterbased, which means the leather gets wet and darker as you dye the leather, so you can really only see the final effect after it has all dried. Then you can touch up and you have to let it dry again....

The test piece made me realize the body would look far too yellow if I used the original colors I chose. So I redid the test piece with a darker brown and a burgundy (mahogany) as a background. I think this will work much better.

Embossing Done!

The fun part is done and now the painstaking coloring (dying) stage has to begin ...

 

Embossing almost done

This part of the project is more fun than work. The tooling of the top piece of leather almost "happens by itself".

 

 

Step Two of Plugging

The next step in the embossing process: the second layer on the plugs. I found that some of these second tier pieces will actually completely overlay some of the ridges I already carved in the first layer.

This is tedious work - for every second layer piece, I first put tracing paper over the original plug and trace the outline of the piece I will cut to go on top. It is glued down and then the scalpel and French edger is used again to achieve the sculpting effect.

For the top layer of leather - the visible piece - I picked a 7 ounce leather, thicker than what Al Stohlman suggests, but I did this on purpose as I do not want all the fine details of the plugs to show. I want to achieve a balance between a feeling of smooth skin and a certain ruggedness, so my plugs are not extremely detailed.