A little bit of leather

I have always loved leather! My favourite is chamois. When I was a kid, I would buy chamois from the local Canadian Tire and used it to make fun clothes for myself. One year, I got a bead weaving loom as a Christmas present, and would bead late at night when I was supposed to be asleep. I added these strips of beads to the clothes, or decorated them with semi-precious stone beads and whatever else my mother had in her jewelry odds-and-ends. My own jewelry odds-and-ends collection grew as well, lending itself to random chamois clothing decorating.

I also used chamois to make little treasure purses or bags. I gave to my friends or sold them to acquaintances at school. Those were the days! I had tons of little stones, old coins, bits of dried herbs… and I would stuff the little decorated bags full of these things and imagine stories for their magic.

As an aside, another random use I had for chamois was as a camping or gym towel. I cycled across Canada with a small chamois as my towel. It was great!

Now that I am an older and wiser adult, I have new more mature hobbies, like customizing Mythic Legions. For a long time I kept my chamois interests and action figure interests separate in time and space, but I have slowly started bringing them together. Chamois is great for action figures in my opinion, because it is:

• Easy to find
• Cheap compared to other leathers
• Thin and flexible, which makes it easy to scale down to action figure size
• Easy to work with

All this makes it easy for beginners. No need for awls, punching tools, or anything expensive for that matter. Just whatever you have lying around the house and in the craft bin!

I have started making capes and cloaks, belts, those front pieces for belts (cubre-pitos haha!), collars and pauldron pieces. My mom also surprised us lately with a box of sheepskins that she had put away and kept when I moved out, so our little dudes have some random wooly warmth this winter. Lucky them! They are better dressed than we are.

Here are some photos of cubre-pitos I made a couple of days ago. They are works in progress, still missing their fancy beads, chains, and embellishments.

I made sure they fit the little hole under their belts with Sculpy plugs. This is just the beginning, but I hope it is the beginning of something good and fun! I will make another post when I have some finished, embellished pieces to show.

Also… they might end up for sale in the store! If you have a project that needs real leather, let us know.

We can make something very cool just for your figure. Who wants plastic when you can have a real amethyst and metal chain on real leather?