My first leather-engraving project: memento coasters for a family reunion in Napa, California.
For finish, I’m going to apply a couple of light coats of diluted acrylic resolene (thanks for all the helpful advice in the forum!).
This is probably a good example of a level of detail you don’t want for a leather engraving. Weeding the tiny bits of fragmented masking was a lengthy process, about 4-5 applications of Gorilla tape followed by spot touch-up. (It’s possible I applied the masking too firmly, but I didn’t want pieces coming off during engraving.)
Our favorite place in the NAPA area is the Gatehouse at the CIA, up North of St Helena. Followed closely by the Oxbow market. The Beltane Ranch in Sonoma is the best place to stay, in our opinion.
I haven’t been to Napa for about 40+ years. We used to go deer hunting up in Healdsburg, and when I was 19 we went with my in-laws on a wine tasting tour through Napa. I couldn’t drink because of my age. But it was great fun learning about the different wines and wineries. Hope you have a fantastic time at the reunion!
The town of Napa is ok but there’s much more to experience.
The only winery we visited as a family was Chateau Montelena. If you haven’t seen the movie “bottle shock”, I’d say that’s a must-watch before you go! We picked up a couple of nice bottles there and enjoyed back at the Beltane ranch on the balcony overlooking their vineyards as the sun set over the valley. Good times!
Edited to add: Bottle Shock is available on Amazon Prime, and many other streaming services for free as well.
Nice contrast on this (thanks for posting the settings in BtM). I do find that the proofgrade leather seems to hold onto the masking for dear life. When I mask stuff with something like the Nekoosa paper, it seems to be more cooperative.
I just tested Proofgrade for comparison. The Proofgrade leather (shown on top) got a little torn up during de-masking — the surface of the leather itself started coming off. The other leather I’m using (bottom) came from Amazon, with my own transfer paper added.
