Leather Fortune Cookies! A Full Batch Of A Dozen, Fresh Out Of The Oven! Stuffed With Mildly Perplexing

Leather fortune cookies! A full batch of a dozen, fresh out of the oven! Stuffed with mildly perplexing pieces of paper!

I cut these when I’ve got a scrap of leather left from another project that’s too small to fit anything else on, and I’ll tend to dye them when I’ve got extra dye that I got out but didn’t need all of.

I’ve had them up on my Etsy store as singles for a while, finally put up a listing for a dozen.

never die, never die

I call this design a storm dragon, an angular contrast to the sea dragon mask that's been one of my most successful over the years. Not as many people seem to have been enamored of it, but I'm still fond of the geometric patterns in the fins. This one is dyed silver.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/291664939/storm-dragon-mask

A new dragon tail made in anodized titanium and blackened stainless steel. It uses teal, purple and violet titanium, in a pattern that gives an image of larger scales overlapping down its length. It’s got a full line of metal spikes along the spine, and a lobster clasp at the tip to attach things onto.

The anodized titanium is a rare treat to work with. It’s expensive and I need to custom-order it from the manufacturer and I’m always low-key worried they’ll tell me to go away one of these times, but damn if it isn’t just stunningly beautiful when it’s good. I really love the variation and texture on every scale, and I like putting together patterns to mix the colors in with each other and try to enhance that effect. In this batch the teal scales shifted on the edge of sea green and blue with hints of purple, the purple was a more muted maroon-ish tone with a blue base, and the violet was a great vibrant tone with occasional shifts towards rose-gold. The colors aren’t quite iridescent, but they definitely look like they were pulled out of the swirling colors of a soap bubble and pumped up to full saturation.

The blackened stainless steel is fun too. I guess I just really enjoy coloring processes that don’t rely on dyes like anodized aluminum does.

This tail is a medium length, measuring in at 31 inches from the tip to the top of the belt line, and it weighs 3 pounds 11 ounces.

I made some adjustments to my raven skull mask so that it works with eye glasses!

When I’ve got little bits of free time to kill I’m trying to slowly work through my mask designs and tweak the ones I am able in this way. I got a couple more that I made for Arisia in January, that I need to remember to cut more copies of.

And of course, it’s up for sale on my Etsy store!

I made some stand-alone dragon horns in the style I used on my dragon head project. They're made of birch plywood, laser-cut and glued up solid. The challenge here was working out a clean attachment to the headband, and I think I did pretty well. The leather strap just threads directly through the wood about 1/4″ up from the bottom surface. Makes for a good solid joint.

The last photo shows the previous version, where the attachment to the headband was via some cord threaded around in the hollow base. The connection ended up kinda floppy and unsatisfying. Like, long ears are cool to wiggle/jiggle when you move your head, but horns are supposed to be firmly attached to your skull.

I’m happy with how these turned out, and I’d love to make more. These were on the small side, I’m thinking of trying something big like rams horns for the next iteration. If you’d like a specific sort of shape, let me know!

And if you’d like this set, you can get them here!