More working, less blogging

It's been a while since the last blog post, but that's due to the fact that a lot of work has been happening here in my workshop. The only slacking is where this blog is concerned. First up is an archery arm guard. This client is quite the fan of Dr. Who, and she wanted to use two different pieces of artwork from the show. I've never seen this particular show, but from the info she gave me they were the Seal of Rassilon and a Time Lord Seal, and I combined the two to make something unique (and to avoid copyright/trademark issues.) Vegetable tanned leather for the exterior, and deer tanned cowhide for the underside and the straps. The leather buttons are reinforced with plastic on the inside to keep them stiff:

 I ordered myself a new knife recently, and that seemed like a perfect opportunity to make another tooth, this time out of elk antler:

A while back I made myself a belt buckle out of an old sewing machine rotary hook, and eventually I got around to using some scrap deer tanned cowhide to make a scrap belt:

For Valentine's Day I made my girlfriend a case for her Kindle. Again, it's vegetable tanned leather for the exterior and deer tanned cowhide for the interior, and it's been tooled with the imagery of a giraffe dragon, or girafagon, or giragon. And raccoon paws:

My friend Doug wanted a tool bag for his motorcycle, and he wanted it to fit in a very specific spot - on the front of the frame, between the frame and the front tire. His bike has some decorative accents in the paint job, so he asked if the tooling could be made to match. I came up with some designs that were inspired by the paint job but unique, and here's the result. The bag had to be thin and tall, so as not to get caught on the tire, and I think that off the bike it looks like a little kid's backpack:

I've been getting more and more requests for repair work, mostly from people that find my Yelp page, and this woman wanted to see if I could fix a camera case. She has a really nice Leica that she inherited, and she found a case at a local shop that would fit it. It was in good shape for the most part, but it had been used and a lot of the stitching had torn, so I restitched what I could:

Another Yelp request - this was to make a plaited leather bracelet for a name plate. It had another leather bracelet on it previously, but it was too thin and the owner wanted something beefier. Here is the result:

This project was to construct a small case for a trench lighter case. This client has come to me enough times that we've even got a signature color for him - tan over red:

Our weekly craft group, Arts and Drafts, recently celebrated our 6 year anniversary, and once again we had a white elephant gift exchange to mark the occasion. Although, this was the first time that there wasn't rampant gift stealing, which seemed odd. Here is my contribution - a simple zippered pouch:

Somewhere in here I found time to work in another request for key fobs from the Hotel St. Cecilia:

Last but not least, here is a wallet I made for the motorcycle tool bag owner...six years later. It looks like it's been through hell and back, so it's time to make him another one:

There's one more thing that I've been working on that took a very large chunk of time, but that's going to get its own post.