I Made A Couple New Leather Notebook Covers. The First One I Made Was A Bit Overly Fancy, With A Bunch

I made a couple new leather notebook covers. The first one I made was a bit overly fancy, with a bunch of stitch-work on the covers, so these are more straightforward. I'm using Moleskine notebooks for the insides because they're nice, and they're freely available.

The Celtic knot pattern is cut all the way through to expose the cardstock of the blank journal inside. It's up for sale over on my Etsy shop.

The interrobang is engraved into the surface of the leather. This one I made just for myself. (The interrobang is definitely my favorite punctuation mark.) As photographed the notebook has been in and out of my pocket and backpack for a couple weeks. So it's holding up pretty nicely.

I'm liking this concept, and would like to make more if it looks like they'll sell. If people have any requests for different types of patterns to do on these, let me know!

Detail shots of the previous scale dragon tail. There's a bit of laser-engraving on two scales--the name of the character this tail is representing, plus an insignia the commissioner uses. I use the same laser cutters to do this engraving as I use to cut my leather designs.

Also showing some close-up shots of the spade tip. This one was a diamond-shaped tip. It's made of leather, which I laser-cut, stain, and sew together by hand. In between the two exterior layers are more leather pieces shaped to give the final tip a bit of dimensionality and bulk.

You can also see the way in which the spade tip gets attached with three lobster clasps, which means the tips are easily removable. Those last photos were taken before I attached the spikes in.

I made a simple mask for people who wear glasses. Finally! I was worried that the horizontal pieces below the eyes wouldn't work out, but it turns out that they're totally cool and seem to conform to the shape of different people's faces pretty well!

I'm super excited. This one wasn't even laser-cut, I just cut it carefully by hand late at night to see if it would work. But I did draw up the design in CAD, and next time I'm in the laser shop I'm making like 5 of these.

Anyway, I'm so excited about this that I just had to put it up on Etsy already. I'll get fresh photos up pretty soon. If someone buys it quickly, they'll get a fresh, non-hand-cut-late-at-night one. Here it is!

A goth-punk set of spiked collar and armbands I made for a themed party/LARP. They're made of 1 inch wide leather bands, stained black, with mirror-finish nickel-plated spikes, buckles and rivets. The cone spikes are sized at 1 inch, 1/2 inch, and short.

I think they look cool, but I don't really know if I'll have much chance to wear them. I should maybe convince some friends to all mob to a goth club or something.

I enjoyed making them, but I think I likely won't work very hard to sell them or similar pieces. They aren't very much in genre with most of my other stuff, and they're not super original or anything. I feel like there isn't much reason for someone to go to me to make these rather than just going to Hot Topic or wherever. Of course, I could be convinced otherwise. And I might play around with more inventive designs in this sort of vein.

These wooden leaf pendants have been on my mind for a long time. The designs are directly based on real leaves, and they're cut from wood of the same type of tree. In my mind it's a sort of vague materials and craftsmanship pun.

The first one I made was the maple one, which I designed and cut just over a year ago, just before I stopped working at the laser-cutting shop, and the oak I designed about a month after I left. Then I put the idea on hold for some time while I poured most of my energy into leather work. I told myself I would put them up for sale when I had three varieties. And last week I finally made one in walnut. So I'm declaring open season on wooden leaves! They're available on my Etsy shop.

I still have a couple other types of wood I'd like to do at some point. I think the next ones I design will probably be ash and cherry, as I have some of those woods on hand. Then there are a couple familiar trees that I'd like to do but their woods aren't commonly available, like elm and gingko. So maybe there will be more coming eventually.

Black aluminum dragon tail with chrome spikes and a spade tip. It also has an underbelly in standard aluminum.

The base pattern for this was clean and simple, but the details were nice. The spikes down the spine accentuate the surface and catch the light nicely. They each attach onto the scales with a screw, which I use thread-lock solution on to help ensure they don't loosen. This pattern has become my standard arrangement of spikes. Though I can only get 2 sizes of these spikes, I feel like this arrangement does a good job of giving the impression of a gradual decrease of size from the top to the bottom.

The other fun detail on this tail was the spade tip. It's made of leather, which I laser-cut out to get an accurate pattern, stain, and sew together by hand. It attaches via 3 lobster clasps, so it can be removed or swapped out.

I'm going to post another set of photos with close-ups and details of this tail, because I have a few more photos. If I have a chance before I ship this out to the commissioner, I'll try to get photos with this outside somewhere pretty.

If you're curious about these dragon tails I make, feel free to check out my commission information page about them and drop me a message!