Hi my jewelry buddies! Today I am back with Potter USA Impression Dies, a press, and leather. I experimented with leather and impression dies a bit in this post/video, but this die is a little bit deeper, so I wanted to test it. I was hoping I could press the Maiden of the Mist pressed into leather without tearing. I love her so I wanted to try to see what the result would be and if I could get the detail in leather before it the leather ripped.
As usual with leather, I wet the back. You want your leather to be damp but not soaking wet. You can spray the back or you can use a finger and dip it in water and run it along trying to keep it off the front. I’m using the leather that I love- the white wax coated leather that I get from Rocky Mountain leather. I wouldn’t do this with the craft store leather, as it would probably disintegrate.
I set the leather up like I would with metal on top of the die, cover it with pieces of the urethane and centered under the pusher.
In my other experiment where I went three pumps beyond resistance, but in this experiment I tried to push it a little bit more. I pumped until I just met resistance and then did 4 pumps and a little bit beyond that, just for good measure. I did line her up and go again, and fiddled with things like Yupo paper and more urethane to try to get more detail.
I cut another piece of leather and then re-tried to press her with the layers I used in the first attempt all in one shot… the layers were:
- the leather on the impression die,
- two layers of Yupo paper,
- a wad of rolled up aluminum foil,
- and then covered the whole thing in urethane.
I pressed to resistance and then again did 4 presses beyond that. I set her back in the die and put urethane only over the section of her face, and taped the leather down to keep everything in place. I’ve mentioned that tape can disturb the back of the leather, and talk about how I deal with that in this post/video. I placed the section of her face in the center of the pusher, and pressed again. That second press finished her, and the leather held up nicely.
At the end of the video I played around with some coloring agents. I tried an opaque Moonlight White ink pad by the Moon and the Maker that I bought from Seth Apter’s online shop, but it looks like that is not available anymore. I would use a white paint or even gesso in its place next time. I also tried Dixie Belle gilding (chameleon) wax and some new Vintaj paints. I tried some of the new Vintaj paints because they changed manufacturers and I wasn’t sure whether the formula had changed, so I wanted to test those. The Vintaj paints at first seemed like they would be too runny for the look I was going for, but I did ultimately use them for one of the samples. I liked the opaque white ink pad, and my favorite was probably Dr. PH Martins Bleed Proof White that had dried out a bit and was almost the consistency of wax (not the way it normally comes I believe), but obviously that is not a supply that can reliably replicated 😉. In the end I went with the white ink pad on one piece, and on another I used the white and then went over that with Vintaj paints in Verdigris and just a touch of Lapis. I also had added a touch of the gilding wax in a Cactus color which added a little bit of green shimmer to it. That was a totally different look from leaving her with just the white, but I thought that was nice too.
If you’ve got any of these things kicking around and you want to play around with coloring your leather, these seem to work as well. However there are lots of mixed media supplies you can try. I talk about some of them here and here, but I bet there is stuff you already own that would work well too!
Enjoy!
