Hand Stitched Simple Wallet in natural leather

I like the look of the natural leather with no dye...

My husband decided to make himself another wallet and leave it natural instead of dying it...

Eventually it will darken with age/use....

I've also been trying to practice taking better product shots now that we're selling things....

So always working on that....

and still working on reupholstering the chair I started posting about a few days ago.

I hit a slight snag with trying to staple on the new fabric,

After making several trips to Lowe's to purchase staplers that didn't do the job--- 

I decided it was time to buy a pneumatic upholstery stapler.  

So my Porter Cable stapler should come this week:)

Latitude Longitude Leather Bracelet

 A new jewelry piece...

I'll be wearing what we refer to as the "macaroni prototype" ---

That's a Despicable Me movie reference for those of you who don't have little ones.... 

 before I sell one, but I'll probably offer this in our Etsy shop eventually.

 I've been wanting to make a simple, leather bracelet and attach a stamped metal tag...

What I started with was a sterling silver tag that was about 1/2 the length of what's actually on this bracelet...

 But I was having trouble finding something to stamp...other than kids names or dates....that would fit on the tag.

Then while I was brainstorming about all this I remembered seeing a website where you could enter an address and it gave you the latitude and longitude coordinates.

 I decided to switch to some aluminum so I could make it whatever length I wanted and see how it looked....

I'm thinking I could do a wider leather piece and stack two shorter tags one on top of the other too...I'll be playing around with it to see what I like

So these coordinates are the spot I met my husband-
which also happens to be the church where we got married-
which also happens to be the church we're still at 9 years later-
pretty special place....

How to Reupholster a Chair Part 2

Part 1 of this chair is HERE.  This is more of the removal of the old fabric.  Which on this chair has been quite a chore.

I got all the staples and fabric loose on the seat itself and found it was attached down under the foam to the interior of the frame....

So I worked the foam out...

Found the staples underneath...

Used my little flat head screw driver to wedge underneath the staple...

Then pulled it out with the pliers...I was using these little needle nosed pliers in this photo so you can see the staple.  Flat pliers work alot better but they hid the staple a bit....

But that is pretty much what you have to do for ever staple all over the chair.  

Each staple is maybe 1/2 " wide and they are very close together all the way around the perimeter of the fabric.

This is how you start...it occurred to me after I my first post that I skipped over this part...

Pulls right off usually...and on this section it did.  Some other parts like the arms it came off in little bits and pieces...

So this is where I was after about 3-4 hours of work.  Every piece is different.  Sometimes pulling the old off goes a lot faster.  If it's got tacks in it it's actually much easier to strip down with the tack lifter..

And this is how the loose woven fabric shreds as it's being pulled off...I think I'll still be able to use it as a general pattern to lay out on the new fabric...I'm almost done with the old stuff coming off....

How to Reupholster a Chair Part 1

 This beauty belongs to a sweet, young lady I go to church with.  

She approached me awhile back about reupholstering it for her....

I'm a slow mover.   I have a bazillion projects going on with the Etsy shop and now our booth space...

And then there are two of these cute little "distractions" too...

You can tell my kids are no stranger to the camera.

 So this is BEFORE...It's in really great shape she just wanted a different fabric...

She picked out a large black& cream buffalo check and she's actually had the fabric for awhile too just never got around to getting it on the chair.

 So I thought I would do some more detailed photos of the whole process....

Because this chair is relatively new, there are staples everywhere not tacks....

And ALOT of glue....alot of glue...

 Today was slow going...

The staples are stuck in the glue which usually peels off but this stuff isn't moving.

And the fabric is a looser weave so I'm trying to save that as my pattern for the new fabric, but it's kind of just falling apart as I pull on it to get it off....

ALOT of these too....ALOT...

Which all get pried out with a small flat head screw driver or sometimes my tack lifter will fit but it seems to be a little large for these staples...

So today I got the fabric off of the seat itself and part of one of the small arm rests....

I'll keep plugging away and keep posting photos as I go.  This style of chair is a good way to start learning how to reupholster.

Vintage Earrings Repurposed

When my grandmother passed away I asked for all of her costume jewelry.  Some pieces I was able to keep and wear as they were but I also took a lot of it apart and redesigned it....I made a couple of things HERE and HERE 

So these first two photos are of some jewelry I found while flea marketing (a necklace) that I then took apart and turned into some earrings....

These next two photos are partly the flea market beads (blue and gold beads) and partly from my grandmother's beads (the cream bead on the bottom)

So this pair ended up going to my sister...

one of the best parts about dividing up the beads was being able to make it go farther so that I could share it with my sisters and nieces....

Five Name Mother's Necklace

A new necklace I made for an Etsy customer....

I think due to Mother's Day I had a few sales...

This customer requested two names on the largest pendant so five names total....

I hope that whomever will be wearing this will enjoy wearing their family close to their heart....

Leather iPhone wallet

Our first Etsy sale...

A hand stitched leather iPhone wallet

 We just finished it up and I took some final photos...

 And we borrowed an iPhone from my sister for some better photos since we only own a trac phone...

 I am really happy with how it came out...mine had a couple of little kinks in it that I was able to work out...

I hope that it's owner enjoys using it as much as I enjoyed making it....
We were thrilled that someone purchased one of our hand stitched leather goods...

Zinc Covered Letters

We have scrap pieces of zinc left from covering tables that are pretty much too small to do anything else with....

so here's what we decided to do...

 We laid out block letters (an H and an L) on 3/4" plywood and then cut them out with the jigsaw...

 Here's the H all cut out....it's 18" tall by 12&1/2" wide...

To cover the H we added the 3/4" and another 1/2" to be able to wrap it around the sides and all the way onto the back so there is a place to tack it into the wood....

Here's how I decided to tackle the inside corners. 

The photo of the "L" below shows the metal clipped for the inner and outer corners which might help it make sense...

The outside ones are easy because you cut a square out and solder them...inside corners you end up with a "v" shaped gap...

So I added these small pieces and soldered the seams....

 And since these are decorative letters I decided to leave the corners a little more rough and not worry so much about smoothing them out all the way...

 It's in our booth (#15 aisle #2) now at the Peddler's Mall....