Embossed Leather Cuffs

You guys, I can't get enough of this embossing powder stuff! I'm embossing everything in sight! So naturally, when my bag of leather remnants caught my eye, I knew I just had to give it a try. Thus came about these awesome leather cuffs!

These are so crazy simple. First grab a leather remnant and cut it to your desired cuff shape/size.

 I shaped mine using my trusty Westcott aluminum ruler. This is not an affiliate link - I just wanted to point out how handy this thing is. I use it when cutting and sealing ribbon with my wood burning tool, and the rounded end works great for things like shaping the ends of this cuff. An easy way to mark leather for cutting without leaving ink or pencil markings is to trace around your pattern shape onto the leather with the point of a seam ripper.

Source

For a fastener I used a ball hitch fastener. These were by Spare Parts, but I know that at least at one time Tim Holtz offered them too.

You just unscrew the bottom like this.

Mark where you want your fastener to be.

Then punch a 1/8" hole for the post to go through. I used a Crop-A-Dile that I got from the same girl who had the embossing materials.

 Insert the post and screw the bottom back on.

 On the opposite end, punch a 3/8" hole for the ball to slip through, then use an Exacto knife or other sharp blade to cut a small slit on either side of the hole. Don't cut them too big or your fastener won't stay put.

Next stamp with pigment ink directly onto the leather.

Quickly cover the stamped area with embossing powder. Here I went with metallic gold.

Shake off the excess and funnel it back into the bottle.

Now fire up your heat gun and watch the magic happen!

 Bright and shiny now!

I just love it!

I liked it so much that I cut out the piece I tested this project on and made a key ring out of it!

I also had some gold leather that I tried it on, and the results were fabulous!

A couple of tips though: First of all, that lovely gold cuff will not be the most durable. The leather will last just fine, but because of the smooth surface, the embossing powder may scratch off. I tried sealing it with clear nail polish, but it just caused the embossing powder to bleed. You may have better luck with another type of sealer.

The best leather for this is going to be a very smooth suede, or a very soft, pliable kid or calfskin leather. These will provide a surface smooth enough to not distort your embossed image while porous enough to give the embossing powder something to bond to. Rough suedes will be too fibrous for the stamp to transfer cleanly too, and it will be nearly impossible to shake all the excess embossing powder off without also removing some from the stamped area.

Posting around here will be a little sparse for the next few days. We've got church camp coming up, so I'm going to be buried making corn bags for the cornhole tournament, as well as doing some summer sewing for Lily and editing a couple of photo shoots.

Have a great weekend!