I’ve been a fan of Field Notes and their aesthetic for a bit, but find myself writing physically less and less (my handwriting has always been terrible anyway, but I do scratch notes and like to sketch). Maybe if I made my own little cover, it’d inspire me to carry the things around and get back into practice.
Continuing to build on this leather thing, and combining skills I’m picking up:
Designed from scratch in Illustrator
Adapted an idea found here for diamond-shaped holes, but made my own to a size and shape more like actual diamond punches
Found and adapted an Illustrator script to lay out objects along a path
Cut a card stock mock-up for fit and alignment before committing to leather
Etched and applied a couple of my acrylic stamps
Played with natural dyes - made acorn pigment, but could not get the leather to take it, even with an alum mordant. I’ll have to keep trying that, but went with dark-roast coffee and finished with a bit of olive oil
Ditched the speed-stitching awl and figured out the double-needle method
Thank you. As with many of these things, I don’t know why I was intimidated, except that it was different. I have to work on backstitch so I can avoid the unsightly finishing knot. I also need to get some finer needles - the Amazon cheapies still need too large a hole.
Love this! I just started learning to do more with leather, too and have noticed the same thing. I bought a small assortment and they’re all pretty ‘fat’. I’m sure this will be part of my learning curve.
I need to try to dye with coffee again. I did not get very good results. I tried “used” coffee grounds. Maybe the ratio was off or I did not wait long enough.
This was dark-roast fresh-ground and coffee, boiled with a fraction of the normal amount of water, and then simmered down even further. As a practical matter, after three pretty generous applications, it really didn’t darken the leather all that much. It added a little color, but it was the olive oil that really made it work.
