The Confident Journal: Making Leather Jewelry

I've been addicted to "leather jewelry" lists on Pinterest, and a friend had a birthday recently, so I thought I'd try my hand at making some.

So. . .like some of my projects, I forget to photographically document until I'm already well into the project, so. . .let me catch you up.

I used my dressform as a scale model for drafting a paper pattern.

So. . .this is where there are pictures missing. I traced the pattern onto leather using disappearing ink (which. . .a word about disappearing ink: It disappears REALLY quickly! So make sure you don't use it and then go get something to drink, because it WILL be gone!)

Then, I cut it out with scissors, and then I cut the fringe part with a rotary cutter and a ruler. (You can see I'd already finished the fringe in the picture below, but this was my attempt at going backwards and photo documenting. You're welcome.)

This picture is when I actually realized I needed to take pictures, so I'm trying to give you the basic idea with this picture.

I cut a reinforcement piece for the top of the necklace and then glued it on.

While that was drying, I started on the earrings.

Those little strips are reinforcement pieces I glued to the tops.

See?

Back to the necklace. I gathered some jewelry pieces to use to attach the necklace together.

Using a leather punch, I punched two holes at the top of the necklace.

And magically, I have already attached the hardware! (This took a lot longer than it seems.)

Then, as further embellishment, I took a flower. . .

. . .and sewed a safety pin to the back of it.

Then, I attached the flower to the necklace. I used a safety pin in case my friend didn't want to have a flower on the necklace. . .and she can use the flower by itself as well.