In every house there is always an old leather bag, jacket, wallet or pants. It is a pity to throw out, because natural material is expensive, and it is quite possible to give it a second life. Some find application in leather stripes, creating brooches, bracelets, earrings, or sew covers for tablets and e-books.
Genuine leather is considered a very pliable and comfortable material for needlework. Products are durable and effective.
If you have a creative nature and skillful hands, then you can create beautiful pictures of the skin with your own hands. Wall panels can be made both flat, according to the type of application, and voluminous or embossed. As an additional means of translating ideas, the master can use pieces of natural fur, thin leather laces, ribbons and a solid base for attaching crafts. Pictures decorated in carved wooden frames will look beautiful.
The article tells how to make leather paintings with your own hands, what material will be needed for this, step-by-step describes how to work with skin, what tools you need to have. The manufacturing technology of such panels requires the necessary knowledge and skills. You can start with simple flat paintings that use colorful leather ribbons.
What you need to have to work with the skin
- Genuine Leather. You can pick up multi-colored rags, but the material is also well stained.
- To create volumetric elements, you need PVA glue.
- To connect the leather parts to each other, take a stronger glue, for example, Moment or Crystal superglue. It must be transparent so as not to stain parts. A glue gun will do.
- You can dye strips or rags as a universal dye for fabrics and leather, as well as acrylic paints and aerosols.
- Thin or floristic wire to add volume to the elements of the picture from the skin. With your own hands you can make an ornament or a mosaic with it.
- Scissors or a sharp clerical knife.
- Pencil and cardboard for templates.
- Bowl of water.
- Construction hair dryer.
- Tools for giving parts a curved shape - metal balls, sticks or a cutter for corrugation.
Beginning of work
Before you make a picture of the skin with your own hands, you need to decide on the image. Beginners can try to make a small flower with leaves around the bud, placing the picture in a small photo frame. Think over the basis for the image. It can be thick cardboard, fiberboard or thin plywood. Be sure to paint the surface, cover with a cloth or make a leather background.
Also, to make a flower, you will need patterns so that all the petals are the same size. Thick cardboard and a simple pencil are useful for this. It is recommended that you start making a picture of leather with your own hands by making a light but spectacular flower.
Beginner Pattern
To make such an element for a panel, two identical long strips of leather are bent in half. The curved edge is cut into thin “noodles,” but not completely, so that the part does not tear. Leave 0.5 cm to glue the strip. Then the blanks are twisted into a circle and the edges of the strips are connected with hot glue. The same manipulation is performed with the second strip of skin. When both parts have dried, they are combined superimposed on each other. Thus, the flower will turn out to be more voluminous.
The middle, having a small hole, must be beautifully designed. For this, a thin lace of contrasting skin color is best suited. It is wound around the beginning in a spiral and attached to the glue base in the center of the flower. It remains only to make the same carved leaflets according to the template and attach crafts from the bottom. To create a picture of leather with your own hands (the photo of the flower above in the article), you can make three or five of these colors, and place them on the entire surface of the plywood base. The finished view of the panel will receive after registration in a wooden frame.
How to make twisted and grooved petals
To make a flower consisting of separate petals, you need to draw a template on cardboard and circle it with a gel pen on the back of the material. Then with sharp scissors cut the elements in the right amount. So that suede fringe does not look out on the edges, they need to be scorched by a candle or a lighter.
A flower will look beautiful, in which the petals will be slightly twisted up. How to make such elements for a picture of leather with your own hands (photo below), read on.
To keep corrugation voluminous, you must steam or soak it in a bowl of water before working with a metal tool with a ball at the end of the part. Then, squeezing well and drawing strips from a central point to the edges, make furrows. To dry parts, you can simply put them off until the morning in a warm place. If you need to quickly dry the petals, use a powerful construction hairdryer.
Making roses
It is interesting to make a picture / panel of leather with your own hands out of roses. To twist each flower, up to 12 identical elements are cut. Detailed manufacturing can be well seen in the photograph below.
In order for the petals to be neat and slightly wrapped in the middle, you need to singe them in turn with a candle or a lighter. Work begins by twisting the central element. It is wrapped tightly in a tube. For bonding, the lower part is smeared with either thick PVA glue or hot glue using a glue gun. Each next part wraps around the previous one. The upper edge bends outward so that the rose petals look as natural as possible. The petals are located with a shift around the center, then they will open in all directions evenly. If the bottom part is uneven, that's okay. It is very easy to align with scissors.
First, leaflets are attached to the base of the picture from pieces of leather with your own hands, and only then the flower itself. Elements curved or with corrugated edges will look beautiful. How to make them, you already know.
Lilies streaked in the middle
In the picture below, from the ribbons and leather with your own hands, you need to make the original lily petals. As you can see in the photo, there is a thin streak in the center of each element. Let us focus on how to achieve such a performance.
According to the pattern, petals are cut with scissors. According to the previously known pattern, we singe the edges so that suede fringe is not visible. In the center of the part, from a sharp top corner down, draw a strip of glue and apply a thin wire on top of it. Then, with hands on both sides, the skin is crushed around. You will have to hold the part tightly for a while, until the glue sets. At the bottom of each petal, light folds will look interesting. If such decorative elements are planned, then before the wire for the vein is formed, it is necessary to soak or steam the part cut out according to the template, and use your hands in the right places. After drying completely, work with the wire.
Flower coloring
To get a beautiful flower, a lily needs to be painted. To effectively complete the task using aerosol paints. First, the skin is completely sprayed with white, then only the middle is painted with yellow paint. The very edges of the skin can be darkened with brown color, having previously applied it on a cotton swab. Its end part makes small dots on the petals. You can take a toothpick for such fine work.
Draped flower
You can make a picture of leather and fur with your own hands using the drapery method. For this, a whole flower pattern with six or seven petals is drawn. Then you need to soak the workpiece well in a bowl of warm water and mash with your hands so that excess air comes out. Then the skin is removed from the container and laid out on the table. Fingers create creases of material in the right places, firmly crushing it from two sides. When dried, the shape of the part will remain wrinkled. In the photo in the article it can be seen that ordinary pins with a ring on the end are used to fix the material.
Drapery can be done on a large piece of leather for the background coating of the base of the picture from ribbons and leather. They press wet material with their own hands, squeezing it with stripes, stars or rays. A flower from several blanks will look beautiful. The middle is filled with strips, one edge of which is cut with "noodles".
Faux leather picture
With their own hands, the masters make paintings not only from natural material, crafts and leatherette look great. Consider a flat picture with the image of chanterelles. You can make any character in this way. First draw a figure on a piece of cardboard. In the absence of artistic abilities, finding a suitable image is easy on the Internet. The printed sheet is divided into separate uneven stripes and color the elements with colored pencils. So you will immediately see what happens as a result of the application.
Then all parts are cut with scissors. Pay attention to the photograph of the picture. It is seen that all the joints of the parts are rounded. The only difficulty in making such a panel is to process the edges of the skin. To make them smooth, without sharp edges, when cutting out elements, add 0.5 mm on each side. Then all the details along the edge are smeared with PVA or Crystal glue and bent inward. Therefore, at the edges, all parts are rounded. After drying out of them it is already possible to collect a picture. It looks original, reminds a mosaic.
Leather stamping
Pictures from a single piece of leather look spectacular if embossed patterns or objects are extruded onto them. For work, you will need a wire, a bowl of warm water, any desired item. It can be scissors or a gun, a toy bug or a simple fork.
First you need to soak the material well, holding it in a bowl. Then lay it on the table surface on the selected voluminous object and press firmly so that the skin “hugs” it from all sides. It’s okay if small “wrinkles” appear around. Perform stroking movements with your fingers and with your whole hand. Use a construction hairdryer to maintain shape. If you do not have such an opportunity, then press down the object tightly, placing a bag of sand on top. It’s better to do this work at night. After 12 hours, the skin will dry out and the embossing will remain for a long time. The photo in the article shows how beautifully the big beetle turned out. After drying, the skin needs to be painted, highlighting the embossing in a different color.
Wire ornament
Another painting technique uses wire as an additional material. First, the necessary patterns or ornament are twisted from it. Then a sheet of genuine leather is soaked in warm water and laid out on top of the wire. Then smooth the material with your hands. After embossing is clearly manifested, the skin is dried, or covered with oppression.
The article discusses how to make leather pictures with your own hands for beginners. The described techniques for performing colors and methods of working with the material will help you cope with the task faster. Good creative ideas!