06.27.08

So, what have I been doing all month?

Posted in The creative side of life at 10:15 pm by Meg

…other than dealing with graduations, workshops, and running critters all over the place….

so glad you asked.

For nearly the last 3 weeks I have been working on my own leather bowl.

I’ve had a couple of people recently ask me about the “process” I go through making a bowl. Because of that, I took a lot of pics as I was working on it. If you aren’t interested in the “process” - just jump to the end to see the finished bowl.

I started by tracing a large bowl onto the leather as a guide for cutting it out. You want the piece to be slightly larger than the lip of the bowl. (black bowl on a black plastic covered table doesn’t show too well does it?)

Then I spent days going through patterns and pictures trying to figure out what I wanted to put on it. I finally settled on this coloring page from Dover. I used to be on their weekly free downloads, and had saved it to carve - this seemed to be the time.

Then I trace over the pattern, first to transfer it onto translucent plastic mylar. And then using a pointy tool, unto the leather (you almost always work on damp leather, not dry.)

When I’m starting completely from scratch and drawing my own pattern, I can just sketch on the mylar, but it’s often easier to sketch on white paper and then put the finished design unto the mylar. One convenience of the mylar is that it is reusable and I can take a design and use it over and over again (getting highly bored in the meantime.)

Once the pattern has been traced onto the leather, you need to carve it. Leather carving tools come in a lot of different shapes, but there is a basic set of 7 tools that you use.

Now that funky thing in the middle is a swivel knife, and it’s the first thing you do. Any line that needs to be more than faint, gets cut. Not all the way, mind, but ideally about a third of the way down.

The other 6 tools are used to add details and textures. The one you use the most is the beveler. Every line you cut, gets beveled to make one side ‘up’ and the other ‘down.’ It can get very, very boring - or a perfect time to get into a white zone.

The last tool you use is a backgrounder - guess where that’s used?

How much you do will depend on your picture, but it stamps down the areas that you aren’t interested in.

Then you need to shape the bowl. - And amazingly, I forgot to snap a picture during the shaping process. - Anyway, I took one at the end by putting the finished bowl, back into the black plastic bowl I used. (Remember that first picture of the leather sitting on top of the bowl?), but since I don’t want this to give away the finished bowl, you’ll have to wait to check it out.

Shaping the bowl takes about 3 days and needs diluted lemon juice and a refrigerator…but it’s actually fairly easy.

After the bowl is shaped and dried completely, you finish it. For this bowl, I opted to paint the flowers and leaves. With all the different flowers, I ended up searching on the web for ideas of what the colors should be. (I’m especially pleased with the blue flowers.)

That sketch under the bowl is a tracing of a dragon for my next project. I’m going to try to make a leather mug like they sell at the renaissance fairs. (But I haven’t found instructions, so it will be fully winged.) I decided to put the dragon on it, and as I suspected, Boy has already tried to claim it for himself.

Then the last steps are to stain the bowl to bring out the details and then cover with a water-proof finish.

I’m definitely keeping this one.

OH, and here’s the picture of the shaped bowl inside the plastic bowl that I traced and cut out.

Now I have to figure out what I’m putting on the bowl I’m selling.

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