Rustic Leather

hello everyone! i almost always love sitting down to write this post. sometimes having very little to say. 😊 other times having way too much i want to say. today is somewhere in between.

i have a hurt arm right now, wrist and the underside of the forearm. it's not an injury, just overuse, i believe, and that has me a bit concerned but i refuse to think about it too much. i have not been working. i'm on day 12 (starting to really twitch now), trying to rest it as much as possible but everything we do uses the arms so it's challenging, and it's only gotten a bit better, so i'll have to think about what to do next. please excuse the lack of capitalization. it's easier for me to type without using the shift key right now. i apologize. 

the point though is that i have not created anything. i decided i would make something for my post, and i would do so without using wire, as it's the pliers that hurt the most. i love wire. love it. i am not afraid of the discomfort, i can deal with that; it's what the discomfort is telling me that concerns me, so pliers are out for a bit. well, maybe next week i'll give them a try. ;) i only have so much will power to stay away!

I have made designs without wire before, but i wanted to do something more than that. 

i have been very inspired by our own kristi bowman-gruel and lynn ferro in their use of paints and other coloring agents and have wanted to try my hand at it for awhile. i've had these leather pieces for almost two years! so yes, it's been a while. the pieces were made by melinda orr of ORRTEC. melinda is a very creative woman, and my hat is off to her after i worked painting leather, something she does all the time. i originally had purchased a pair of these leather wedges already painted. so beyond being inspired by melinda, kristi and lynn, they are likely similar to the pair melinda painted. she gave me instructions on how best to go about this, and the steps she takes. i did modify the leather pieces a bit. i won't go into the long story. There's nothing to learn from it, otherwise i would. ;)

so i did the painting over a few days. i painted the solid black background, front and back, and let that dry, really dry, and then did the painting in steps, basically by color as i decided what i wanted where. it wasn't the best thing for the arm, but i was not using pliers and that was my goal. i had what i thought were the thinnest brushes but i cut one of them to an even thinner point at the tip. the areas to paint in are very small. some of the areas required repainting with black when i "painted outside the lines." :) 

after all the painting was completed, again i let them thoroughly dry. using melinda's method, i took a piece of sandpaper to them to roughen them up and age them, and bring out some of the tan-colored leather underneath. 

I strung tiny copper-plated link chain between the 3 holes. then using waxed irish linen i hung just about the last of my stash of antique venetian glass beads, more than 100 years old. i have set aside two beads for myself but other than that, this is it of the good ones.  

The tops contain copper spacers and blue green picasso finish czech glass beads on linen also, then attached to a copper-plated flat spacer ring which accommodated both the linen and the black niobium ear wires. 

i did end up having to use pliers for the six copper links which the chain is attached to; it was not pleasant, and that was a sad moment for me. 

all in all it was a challenge, really. the painting was a painstaking process but very fun to see them become. i would will definitely paint again, hopefully sooner rather than later! 

as always, i am so grateful you stopped in to check us out. i thank you for letting me share my passion with you. i do hope this finds you all healthy and well.

thank you!

norbel

shefliesagain

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