Techniques in Leather Craft

By Ethan O. Tanner

Leather craft is a fascinating hobby and many artists have taken this way beyond carving initials or embossing a logo. Leather craft requires special tools and specific types of leather. Many craft workers have taken leather craft on the far side a hobby into a half-time or steady business.

Embossing is art of creating a three-dimensional image onto leather. The simply type of leather you want to try this by is vegetable tanned leather, which potentially identified as tooling leather. With leather craft embossing, you don't need far-reaching training since all that's mandatory are some special tools, embossing plates or wheels, and some basic leather craft knowledge, which can be learned in a class or even on the Internet.

With embossing, pressure is created from underneath the leather item or from on top. For de-bossing, this is when the design is backwards, created from the top side of the leather, which would produce a sunken look on the other side.

The great thing about embossing is that you do not need extensive training or expensive tools to create a remarkable leather craft piece. The most popular method of embossing involves buying an embossing wheel. These wheels do range in size but the one used most often is one-inch wide made of metal. On the metal wheel are various types of designs that protrude, which is what will set the image into the leather.

You can find embossing wheels with every type of design imaginable. There are flowers, animals, scrolling, geometric designs, and so on. These embossing wheels are very inexpensive and easy to find at any craft, hobby, or leather store. Just keep in mind that if you plan to emboss leather on a regular basis, it would be best to buy the better quality wheel.

This type of leather work affects getting the leather wet so the design of the embossing will dry stiff and stand out more. If you don't have a exceeding embossing wheel, you'll be able to use stencils like you'd have used in primary school to trace your initials. Almost hobby stores have a vast choice of stencils to choose from, giving you a good assortment. And so, using a hammer made specially for embossing, you'd thump out the design in the stencil, acquiring the embossed design on the other side of the hide.

To generate an idea of what leather craft embossing looks like, if you've ever seen a notary public stamp on an important document defined a marriage license or birth certificate, that raised design is embossed. Keep in mind that the quality of the embossing is dependent on the skill of the person swinging that hammer. The more detailing you see in a piece of embossed leather, the more time and effort it went for achieve it.

Blind stamping is a reference to embossing rises up that are not colored. At times, pigmentation potentially added or gold leafing expanded to deepen the leather craft work. With stamping, a special pressure is used that appears like a hand stamp to make the design. In addition with leather craft stamping, designing is often not three-dimensional but different colors. The outcomes are very nice but don't have the advanced result you get with embossed leather.

Tooling is an art form that takes time to learn. This type of leather craft involves hand tools like a chisel and hammer to create intricate designs. Look up our article on "Classes" through the link below for more information on where to find quality training for this amazing style of leather craft. - 29943

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