Tooling Our Checkbook Cover

Today I'm going to go over how I tooled my checkbook cover and then put on the first coat of stain.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to use my basket weaving tool.  Basically I'm going to create a border around the edge, then I'm going use my basket weaving tool to make the cover look like it has a basket weave on it's sides.  It should look really nice when I'm done.  The other nice thing about this design is it is really easy to achieve.  You get a great look with very little effort.  Let's get started.

About the color the leather should be when it is ready to be tooled.

First you wet the leather.  This is one of the bigger questions of leather craft:  How wet should your leather be? You don't want it to be too wet.  This can cause issues as the leather dries.  Then your stamps and cuts will be uneven.  I like to wait until it starts to turn back to it's natural color.

I wait another couple minutes, then I start.  The general rule is when it's cool to the touch it is ready to go.  As long as it's not dark brown you  should be safe.

Cutting a border with, surprise, the border tool.

Here I took my border tool and cut a border around the edge of my leather.  If you do not have a border tool you can just draw a line using a ruler and a pencil then using your swivel knife you can cut the border.  Now I wanted to do a slanted weave instead of a straight one so I took my ruler and made measure from corner to corner.

I then picked about the middle, you can eyeball this, and place my basket weaving stamp there.  Then I alternated (see picture) by placing the stamp adjacent to the first stamp but offset slightly.  

I have to show this part on a scrap piece of leather as I forgot to take pictures when I did the first few stamps on the checkbook cover.

Repeat.  Now is is just a matter of filling in the space.

When I get close to the border I needed to tilt the stamp slightly so I wouldn't stamp outside of the border.  After having finished with the basket weaving tool it is now time to finish the border.  The border part is easy as I took a camouflage tool and just stamped it along the border.



If I could go back and do things differently I probably would have skipped the camouflage tool.  It didn't come out as nice as I thought it would.  I think it would have been fine if I had just beveled the the edge.  The good news is it still looks good and I was able to bevel the edges and it came out nice regardless.


I would imagine a different border tool than the camouflage stamp would work well here.  Since I do not have one at this time I worked with what I have.  I'll know in the future.    

Now I moved on to staining my project.  This was a very simple task.  I laid out my drop cloth and waited to leather to fully dry.


Then I took a basic dauber and dipped it into my stain.  Using a circular motion I applied the stain to the whole piece making sure to be as even as possible.  After I achieved the appropriate evenness I let it dry.  This piece only needs one coat so when it is dry we can move onto to lacing it.

After it dried I used rubber cement to apply the lining to the leather.  For the large piece of lining I cover the whole piece with cement but for the pockets I only cemented the edges.  After the cement has dried it is time to lace.

Using a basic double loop stitch I will complete the project.  (I will write a separate entry on stitching.)


Well there is our checkbook cover.  (I will post a picture of the finished product when I'm doing stitching it.  Should be done in a day or two.)  Let me know if you have any questions by emailing me at:

theslackjaw@gmail.com

Until next time, Happy Crafting!  

UPDATE: I have finished the Checkbook Cover:

What do you think?