Seeking Leather Craft Tutorials!

[Dixie Dellamorto]

ScarletFrost

I'd like to get into leather craft. I'm just barbaric in that I like the feel of other animals' skin on mine. I've found a few places with tutorials for leather masks and pirate hats, but I was wondering if anyone had a good place for a BROKE noob to start learning about leather craft. I've done belts and bookmarks before, and I'd like to do bracers, armor, and all kinds of accessories.

I'm a leathercrafter for a living. I've made Bracers, armor and all kinds of accessories, what can I help you with?  

[Dixie Dellamorto]

It will be pricey to get started, because of all of the tools you'll need, but once you get it down you can make oodles of money. Hats are a bit difficult and I still havent thought up a way of making an easy tricap, or top hat. My Aunt makes Top Hats that we sell at our shop. You're best bet for making small cash, is bracers, wristbands, and small jewlry, you can make necklaces and earings. Chokers and collars. Also you can decopodge on leather with immages. Small stuff will make you more money then large stuff in the long-run.

I get all of my materials, supplies and tools from Tandy Leather Factory. http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/ They should be able to find a store near you, and if not (Mine is like 2 hours drive away) They ship everything to you.

As far as tool that are a must in leather crafting here is a list of things you'll need to get started (everything here is something that you can find thru leather factory):

-Leather Shears (Big sissors)

-A razor knife, the kind you find at any home depot type of place, with
replaceable blades.

-A Swivel Blade (For making lines and carving images into the leather)

-A Maul or a Mallet, but because of the mallet's light it's actually harder to use.

-A set of Hole Punches

-You'll need one of each: a proper cutting board, a Poundo Board (to use with your hole punch) and a marble slab/Granite slab/anvil.

-Rivets are a must in almost every project I do. They perminatly hold things together, and sometimes they look better then sewing, not to mention much easier then sewing.

-For armor you're probably going to want to be able to use grommets, so you're going to want to first get a grommet setter as well as a bag of grommets in the color that you want.

-You're also probably going to need snaps and a snap setter, these and the grommets are both used to hold things together in such a way that they're easy to put on and take off.

-If you want to do hats you're going to need a Sewing Awl Kit. They're for use with soft leather and pre punched leather.

- Leather, usually the bigger you go the better the deal. I would start with natural color and try out a few of the new natural leather dyes.

I know I'm probably forogetting some things that I should put here... If you have any questions let me know.

As far as stuff you don't really need right now, Stamp tools. Every leather crafter should have a few. (I myself hate using them, when you use them it's called tooling, and though I'm pretty good at it, I just hate it) If you want your armor to look ornate you're going to want to learn some basic tooling. I would get a book as well as a basic stamp set. You can also get Letter stamps as well as all kinds of animals, plants, faces, trees, bugs... anything you can think of, they've made a stamp of it. I'm not sure about gears and the such, but that would be a very good idea. For tooling, you may want to try the hi-lighter, which is a dark liquid you put on after tooling and dying, it's used to antique the leather and make the details of your tooling and carving stand out.


Okay! So thats what you need to get started! That's step one. When you have everything I'll help you figure out how to make easy patterns and if you want I can show you pictures of things my mother and I have made over the years to give you some inspiration. 3nodding