Between finishing up my last semester at Missouri State University and making a big move about four hours from my hometown, I have been rather busy. I haven't been able to do as many leather projects this past summer as I had hoped. However, I have gotten to do a few and I am pleased with the work I have done so far this summer. Earlier in the summer, I purchased some new leather-tooling tools and other supplies, so I have been using those quite a bit. I have been expanding my leathercrafting a little bit to other areas such as using acrylic paints on some of my work which I really enjoy doing. I feel the paint helps my designs stand out a lot more as well as a more colorful look. I am also learning about what types of paints I can use and what types I can't use, so I can avoid any "leathercrafting disasters."
My most recent project I have done involved using the acrylic paints for the first time. First, I drew out my design on a sketch pad. I chose a cow skull design for this project with a feather hanging from the right horn. Once I completed my drawing, I began brainstorming different colors I wanted to use on my design before I began tooling it onto my leather. I settled on black, off-white, and gray to give my design the western look I usually go for in my work. Tooling the leather with this particular design rather time consuming because there were lots of "squiggly" lines. Once I was able to tool my design onto the leather, I was then ready to begin painting. I was extremely nervous about painting this particular design and I was sure it was not going to turn out exactly as I hoped. But I took my time and only painted with the colors I knew for sure that I wanted. Once I got the hang of it and saw how nice the colors were turning out, I even painted in other areas of my design. Once it was all completed and I put my finish over all that, it turned out beautifully as you can tell in the picture. I posted my work on my Facebook page and received lots of great feedback on this particular project. I even had quite a few people interested in buying this piece from me, however, I like it so much that I have decided to keep it for myself! I do plan to make another piece similar to this in the near future.
I am currently working on another project at the moment. I started it a couple of days ago and have just now tooled the design onto my leather. Like the skull in the above picture, I plan to paint this project with my acrylic paint although I have not decided exactly what colors I will use yet. As you can tell in the picture, I use a very small desk to work at which doesn't provide me with very much room. I think it's time to buy a bigger deks LOL! As you can tell in the picture, my design is a horse drinking water and a tree in the background. In the picture on the left is my sketch pad on which I drew out my design first. This is always the very beginning of all my projects. I first draw out the design on the sketch pad (All of my designs are original) before using the tracing vellum to trace the desgin onto the leather. In the picture, you can also see my spray bottle with water. As I have explained in earlier posts, damping the leather is very important when tooling because the leather will hold the design much better than if it were completely dry. Some leathercrafters use a bowl full of water and a sponge to dampen the leather, but I prefer the spray bottle. It is less messy and dampens the leather much faster. I also have my granite slab used to provide a much harder and firmer surface to work on. I also have my mallet, swivel knife, beveling tool which I used to complete the outline of my design, and an awl which is used to trace the design onto my leather and make other very light scratch marks.I hope to have this project completed very soon. I will be sure to blog about my completed project for everyone to see. In the meantime, check out my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/CircleMLeather where you can see more of my work. Oh and don't forget to "like" it to get the latest news from Circle M Leathercrafting!
