Hi y’all! Well, I’m still trying to get impressions into leather! In todays’ experiment I have a beautiful, gorgeous piece of copper that’s been imprinted. I got this from Potter Press and I have two of these, so I was willing to sacrifice at least a piece of one. So I decided to try to use this to roll through with a piece of leather and see if I can get this to press into the leather.
I am using the Sizzix Big Shot and as always I will warn you to read the original post in my embossing leather series which has additional information and warnings. These experiments are not for the faint of heart and certainly not for those who are either under warranty with their die cut machines and/or are not experienced in using them.
In my intro for this video, I said I was going to use the copper strip to impress into polymer clay and try that to impress the leather, but I decide to do that in it’s own video and post, so this one is not a twofer, haha.
In the video I used a piece of leather that I had pre-cut and wet and then let sit for a couple of seconds. I was worried that my piece of embossed copper was a little too long to fit on the Sizzix Big Shot platform, but it ended up working after a little bit of fiddling. As usual, I probably should have taped things down, but again as usual I decided to wing it 😉 . Also, I decided that the next time I might cut the leather a little bit wider and then trim it down. It was hard to keep centered everywhere and on the mat.
I’m not sure I mentioned it in the video, hopefully you can see it, but I had the Sizzix multipurpose platform down with only the thin tab (tab one) down, and then the embossing rubber. The leather was placed face first against the copper strip and then that sandwich was placed faced down onto the embossing rubber. The embossing mat goes on top. I decided I needed a couple of shims and used three pieces of paper on this one.
I loved the way it came out. It’s not a super deep impression, but I don’t have a plate or anything and I certainly can’t cut that design out of paper. That’s so super detailed. It’s also a little more 3D than what I can get with paper. I think the design in the copper is so pretty and I loved the results! It may be hard to color, but I’ll still work with it.
I mentioned that this piece of copper is from Potter Press. Kevin and the rest of the gang make all kinds of beautiful tools and items for working with, traditionally, metal. He’s got beautiful impression dies for metal, rolling mill plates, pancake dies that cut, etc. And then there are these pre done pieces of wire/sheet that you can make bracelets and pendants and with the smaller designs, rings. Just beautiful, beautiful stuff!
So this was another way that to use these copper strips. You will get the inverse of this design- for example whatever is pressed in in the wire will be pressed out on the leather and vice versa. And it doesn’t look like it did very much to the copper, maybe pressed it a little bit, so I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to use this same piece of copper, but I imagine quite a few times.
If you’re not a metal worker, this may be a little bit more difficult for you to use, especially a big piece like this. If you’re just doing little bits and pieces, you can buy brass plates- even Michael’s sells them pre etched and they’re small. Lately the copper pieces I’ve been receiving from Potter Press have been cut down into 2 roughly equal parts, so that may be good news for y’all who don’t know how to saw them down. I think he does this now to make it easier to ship. They will be roughly 5-6 inches so that might work for those of you who aren’t used to working with metal.
The larger pieces will bend more and then you will need to anneal it to the bend out. If you’re not a metal worker, you’re not going to be able to do that. But the smaller pieces you should be able to get away with, I’m thinking without the metal bending on you, at least as quickly. And you might be able to bend it back.
So anyway, if you have all this stuff around, and are experienced with your die cut machine then you might want to give it a shot. Enjoy!
