spindle_ella | Homemade2Homemade

Okay, so, I participated in

homemade2homemade this year. My recipient has received her gift, and here's a little bit about making it.

I thought I'd taken a lot more process photos, but when I looked at my camera afterwards there weren't nearly as many as I remembered taking. o_O

I started off with a Doctor Who theme, but after asking for clarification on a different thing it was clear that Venom was the fandom of my recipients heart, so I overhauled and made a Venom themed traveller's notebook. They still got these TARDIS earrings with their main gift though, lol:

The leather I usually work with doesn't take acrylic paint well, so instead of painting my design on with white acrylic I used a glue that melts protein (watered down a little). Once it's dried it's no longer sticky, and it forms a shiny surface that can be used to pick out a subtle design.

I have some glow in the dark pigment, so I did a couple of experiments to see if I could get that to mix in. First I scratched out and scuffed the design on an offcut, so my protein-melter can better stick to it:

Then I mixed up my glow in the dark pigment, and painted it on:

This didn't work, as the pigment contained some large particles among the fine stuff, so I wasn't happy and decided against using it (If you look close you can see it on the left side of the design. It looked even more wank when it dried).

For my final piece, I sized and trimmed the leather, made the holes for stringing, and then drew my design on and scratched it out:

I forgot to take photos of punching the edges for stitching, or of me actually stitching, or painting on the protein-melter. D'oh. But here it is stitched, strung, and dried.

I've taken the photo at an angle where you can see the design better. It's very subtle from other angles - and I wanted to have Venom's tongue wrap around to the back because I thought that worked for the character.

If you haven't come across traveller's notebooks before, they have elastics inside that you slide your inserts onto - so once you've used up a notebook you can simply slide it out, and slide another one in. I sized this for pocket cahier, as I know it can be found pretty much worldwide thanks to Field Notes and Moleskine, and their knock-offs.

I added a notebook and made a small folder for keeping receipts/clippings. I thought about decorating them, but decided against it as I didn't want to put my recipient off using them. I also added a bookmark with a tiny star charm.