Crafting a leather belt buckle from one of the buckle blanks from Tandy is not hard provided that you have some basic leathercraft supplies and a little know-how. This is the first leather-covered buckle I've made, and I've photographed the steps to give you a tutorial on how it's done. The buckle made in the [...]
I find it inspiring and informative to look up other artists' workshops. I can imagine them at their workbenches, toiling (or in my case, tooling) away to their favourite music, the hours soaring by, completely lost in their craft. Peter Main's leather workshop continues to inspire me! While I wait for the finish on my [...]
While perusing the Tandy leather store for new buckle styles and to see their new professional line of metal stamps, I discovered (on sale!) a beautiful hide with character and personality etched on its entire surface. Most leatherworkers would have passed over this skin, as it had a mottled and veined pattern, with scratches and [...]
Like any natural product, leather quality can vary greatly from hide to hide. This can pose some interesting challenges for leathercrafters, as any two hides from the same tannery may carve and dye very differently! Fortunately for me, I haven't had any major problems with dying. Sure, there may be slight differences in colour shade, [...]
I love browsing Etsy for dog-related things, especially those related to sighthounds. This morning, I did a double-take when I happened across a very familiar collar, but recreated and posted by a new seller of one month. The copied collar was my Wings Leather Collar with Crystals, pictured below: I'm not going to call out [...]
My brother posted some photos of the Super Mario Belt on imgur last night. Here's the link: http://imgur.com/a/ta7GU. Scroll down on this page to see the original post when it was created! I woke up to a plethora of Mario belt-related emails, Etsy convos, and a crashed web server. I discovered that my brother made [...]
I've always admired Celtic designs, so when a request arose for a "not too girly" collar for a male poodle named Phoenix, I was thrilled to incorporate this style. The Celtic phoenix collar is the first project which features a gradient of colour dyed onto the design itself, in the form of the red to [...]
My young dog has no respect for his collar on lead (we're working on that!) and he tends to pull on the leash, attempting to drag me to every squirrel, bush, or neighbour that strikes his puppy fancy. On walks where I just want to get to the mailbox and back without being in "training [...]
My brother was thrilled with his birthday present! The belt depicted the final level in the Nintendo Super Mario game, the one where Mario finally rescues the princess (after many failures in other castles). He was speechless, and insisted on wearing it on top of his extra long T-Shirt. He was flabbergasted that it was [...]
Above is my first photo of a Super Mario belt work-in-progress: My earliest memories of my brother are of his silhouette jumping up and down in front of the TV. He was 5 years old, playing a Super Mario game on Nintendo. He jumped every time his mustachoid hero jumped, on his quest to rescue [...]
