Hops Money Clip Creation/ How to transfer image onto leather

So I had a recent request to do a really fun project. I never really thought it would turn out, but I got lucky! I was asked to do a money clip with a hops cone on the front.
Now for anyone like me, I knew hops was a brewing ingredient, but I didn't know much else.

This is what wikipedia told me: "Hops are the female flower clusters (commonly called cones or strobiles)... They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer." I should have known this, being in one of the main brewery towns for Budweiser...

So first I needed a design. I was told by my local beer expert (also known as boyfriend) that the leaves were particularly beautiful too. So after some research, I found my cone image (and borrowed some pictures of the leaves from other sites...

I bought a leather craft kit from Tandy Leather Factory, mainly because I'm too lazy to cut the leather myself into perfect shape. (those hole punchers make little hands quite sore!)

I traced the hops cone and leaves using tracing paper, and transferred it to the leather. For anyone not familiar, it's pretty easy: lightly wet your leather, place tracing paper LEAD SIDE UP on your leather, and trace! I use a mechanical pencil with no lead sticking out. The proper tool is a stylus.
I then used a swivel knife to cut around each line- including the veins of the leaves. For the primary and most bold of the veins, I cut fairly deep. The rest simply branch off of that.
As far as tooling goes, all I did was use an angled beveler around each layer of the hop cone and then under the smooth part of the leaves.

Next came the painting, staining, and assembly. Voila! Maybe next project I'll focus on painting and staining.

Any requests? :)

Leather- a more difficult design

So yes, you can do leather and just stick to your everyday stamps and shapes that you purchase, or you can do something a little more special. I've been working on a set of chargers for a family friend. He requested trillium flowers with a small border. The chargers (which in this case are going to be more similar to place mats rather than plates) extend an inch beyond his dinner plates all the way around, and will be stained Fudge Brown.

So I started out the design with a good bit of research. I needed the perfect shaped trillium blossom that I could stylize to go with the dinner plates. Here's the test piece, and how I did it:

The biggest challenge for me was figuring out how I was going to get 8 perfect circles that were all exactly the same. Improvise. I went to the kitchen, and low and behold, the top to the wok was exactly the size I needed. I set the pot top on the leather and cut with an exacto knife. Voila! I ended up using a whole double shoulder of leather for this, but it's going to be worth it.

PS... a double shoulder is the spread from the bottom of one shoulder of the cow, up over the withers, and to the bottom of the other. You can buy leather in a variety of sizes, including a double shoulder, or single shoulder!

The rest, save for scrap test pieces and other small projects!

I needed to match the design of the plates, but didn't want to take away from the design. I sketched a few versions, and put the final one on tracing paper.

To transfer an image from tracing paper to leather:

Wet your leather. It won't transfer if you don't wet it.

Set your pattern on top of the leather, pencil up. You don't want your pencil markings to go onto the leather, because it won't come out.

Here's where you're supposed to use what's called a stylus, but since money is tight, I use a mechanical pencil with no lead exposed. This is just to make a mark in your leather that is faint and usually is covered by any tooling that you would do. Trace just hard enough so that the image will transfer, but not so hard that you will rip your paper. Remember, wet paper rips easily. I almost tried to make a joke about the durability of wet toilet paper, but I'll hold my tongue today. :)

Once your design is transferred, my best suggestion is to use a swivel knife to cut along the lines you just transferred so that when stamping, the relief area will be more pronounced. Starting with the forground, stamp along the outer edge with a smooth, flat, square stamp. (B201-00 from the Tandy website)

On my trillium chargers, I did the flower petals first, and then the leaves. I then used a smooth tear dropped shape stamp to give the leaves some texture. Leaves aren't perfectly smooth, so neither will mine. I used a few other stamps to give the flower some interest, and then used the swivel knife to give the leaves veins. Use your judgement on the details and accents. Anything to spice it up will help.

Enjoy! I'll follow up with more pictures of the finished product. This image is a sample for the colors, so I don't know how it will be stained in the end.