Leather Horse Coasters

So my latest project consisted of making four leather horse coasters with my popular barb-wire design around the edge of the coasters. This coasters were the quickest thing for me to complete up to this point. The coasters were extremely easy to make with minimal effort required. They were also relatively inexpensive to make, only costing around $3.00 total to buy all the material needed. I currently in the process of making some more coasters with a more complicated design which I hope to have completed very soon.

To begin making the coasters, I took a large piece of vegetable tanned leather and cut out four circles. Each four circles measured about 3 to 4 inches across. Once I had the four circles cut out, I stained them with leather stain to give them the desired color. I set these pieces aside to dry. While they were drying, I cut out four more smaller circles. I took one of the smaller circles and began wetting it with a wet sponge. Wetting the vegetable tanned leather with a sponge before beginning the tooling/stamping process makes it easier to stamp/tool the leather as well as helps hold the stamp better. Wetting the leather will also help prevent a double impression which is definitely NOT wanted when it comes to stamping leather. It is a good idea to get the leather completely wet but not so wet that it is soaking and drips when picked up.

Once the leather was wet, I began using my stamping tools to stamp the horse head in the middle of the circle and stamp the barb-wire around the edge of the circle. After I had my entire design stamped/tooled, I began putting leather stain over it. The stain helps give the leather a more desirable color as well as helps to give the design a darker color and makes it stand out more. I completed this process with the other three pieces of leather and let them set aside so the leather stain was completely dried.

After the leather stain dried, I glued the smaller circles to the larger circles with cement glue. Cement glue gives a much stronger hold and doesn't run like other types of glue. Other types of glue can also mess up the color of the leather thus damaging it. I allow each coaster about 20 minutes or so for the glue to dry completely. Once the glue was dry, then my coasters were complete.

The whole process took me about 45 minutes. I had a lot of fun making these coasters and cannot wait to make more. I plan to use different types of designs, so if you have any suggestions on what I could do, feel free to let me know!