Sometimes You Just Gotta Make Something Simple As A Material Test.

Sometimes you just gotta make something simple as a material test.

Threw together this collar because I’ve been dissatisfied with my strap work. Needed to do a bit of practice and figuring out on making the edges a bit nicer.

Normally I’m happy to just leave the laser-cut edges on things I make. I try to put the hard work into the design, and keep the labor to a minimum. After all, there are plenty of other leather crafters who’re better than I’ll ever be at doing things like highly polished collars and straps. But as I’ve been doing more designs that require buckled connections, it’d be good to get more confident in the hand-made strap department.

I wanted to do some “How well does this stuff last” posts. Pride Month is convenient for that, because I remember that I made this necklace for myself before last year’s Pride parade. And I’ve been wearing it basically 24/7 for the whole year since. I ate, worked and slept with it on. I took it off for showers and for some occasional costuming events, but that’s basically it.

You can see spots where the point of one scale rubs against the scale below it, and has slowly worn through the anodized layer, exposing the base aluminum. I find it cool that this mostly happens on in the areas of the necklace that curve over the shoulders, and much less on the area that drapes flat in front. 

The edges of a bunch of scales are showing some wear, making it look like they’ve got just a bit of a border of silver aluminum. And a couple scales nearest the closure have some pock-marking, which I assume is from sweat. The plating on the lobster clasp is worn through fairly strongly though.

None of the scales are bent or dented, none of the connections are in danger of wearing through any time soon. And all in all, I think it still looks good!

Not bad for a $50 sticker price and a year of continuous wear!

A couple bracelets that I shipped out yesterday.

The rainbow one is a fun pattern I don’t get to do much, it’s a Japanese 6-in-1 weave, with doubled rubber rings as the node rings. It’s stretchy and fun! I’ve got more Pride designs over in the Rainbows section of my Etsy shop!

The scale one is anodized aluminum in the yellow/gold color.

It’s nice to have small things to make in between the big commission projects.

Just some quick photos of this mesh/screen mask from before I shipped it out last week. This concept was originally just a quick prototype idea, but since people seem to like it I'm thinking I should probably do some variants like different patterns or a full-face version.

Been seeing a bunch of Mortal Kombat stuff recently, and it reminded me of this design I'd made a few years ago. I'd made one copy of it at the time, and a friend snagged it for a LARP character (last photo), and then I forgot about it. So I went back and digitized the paper template I'd made for that, cleaned up a couple weird spots in the pattern, and laser-cut a new version out of the same super-clean leather I used for the dragon costume.

And of course I posted it up for sale over on my Etsy store!

Scale dragon tail in red with a black underbelly. My friend with Very Good Wiggles is showing off how flexible these are and how fluidly they move.

The scales are anodized aluminum, linked together by stainless steel rings. This one measures in at 36 inches from the tail tip to the top of the belt, and weighs 3 pounds 1 ounce. It’s got a lobster clasp at the tip to attach little things onto.