So… I made a kind of vortex manipulator.
At least it feels like I made a vortex manipulator… perhaps a steampunk time manipulator would be a better term.
As in, “you forgot to wear me, so I’m giving you the wrong time” manipulation.
I bought this awesome self winding mechanical watch from Ebay, and had already been considering working with leather, because its just so cool, so I made myself a watch-band/cuff.
That vaguely looks like a vortex manipulator.
**And I would like to say in advance that all the leather I have bought so far have been remnants from companies, so I’m using what would have been thrown in the trash and discarded to source my minor projects, not whole skins. I know about the ethical dilemmas surrounding leather, and I have not yet finalized my opinions.
Many fun attempts with the leather came first, punching and cutting and drawing, and all sorts of amusing and loud means. I needed to get a feel for how the leather would work before starting in on the project.
I found out that the leather I had bought previously was not the right type of leather for tooling – the term for creating designs on leather by cutting and punching.
Then I bought more leather, the right kind of leather.
I cut out my cuff base out of dark brown leather, and roughly cut off my pieces for my designs out of the tooling leather.
I dutifully wet the leather, then I drew out my design. I have been doing pretty well just drawing free hand with a pencil, which won’t transfer the graphite on the wet surface.
Then I used my swivel knife to cut out the design
I used my newly acquired old leather tools to make my pretty patterns on them. One side is inspired by the TARDIS explosion painting, which I adore, and the other has some circular Gallifreyan components, inspired by these fan grammars.
Because my wrist is really tiny, I knew I was going to have a lot of bulk around the top of the wrist, where the watch itself would lay. In order to reduce this, even just slightly, I thinned out the leather on both sides of the tabs at the top of the tooling leather. The tooling leather attaches around the watch with an itsy bitsy rivet. Ain’t it cute?
The hole punch came out and I punched a bunch of carefully placed holes for my rivets and snaps, cut down some of the leather at the end of each strip, and put it all together!
It doesn’t lie flat very well, because the tooling leather takes a little more depth to make it around my wrist, so its a bit more three dimensional.
It looks awesome on my wrist though! I’m very happy with it!
Now I just need to train it to give the correct time…
Linked to Steam Ingenious’s July Link-up