DIY Cardholder

My all-time fav cardholder... This is taken 1 day after applying LP. The leather looks much revived. There's a slight matt finish though, but I bet it will be shiny again in a few days time upon usage.

Update for DIY Card Holder, Red Wing 9013 Beckman & Timberland Earthkeepers

Hi Everybody!
Sorry for not updating so frequently lately, been tied up with work and lots of new things going on in life. So yeah, lesser time for blogging. But fret not! I will still do my usual postings of aging leather and stuff, just that it may not be so frequent and my response to your comments (if any) may be a little slow. So do bear with me!

Here's whats coming up:

My DIY cardholder:

Been sometime since I carried it and recently met up with a leather artisan and he saw my cardholder, he was pretty amazed at how it aged and looked. Since I got some free time on hand today, so I went to clean it with Obenauf's Leather Cleaner and follow up with the Heavy Duty LP.


Next up,

Red Wing 9013:

My all time favourite shoes. Took lots of thrashing and beating but still look amazing! Sprayed generously with the cleaner and scrubbed it clean with a clean piece of foam.


And finally,

Timberland Earthkeepers:

To be honest, this pair of boots had almost became my daily beaters. Reason? Its lighter and easier to wear. When I need to visit places that requires me to take off my shoes, this slips off like any canvas shoes, heck, it even weighs like a pair of canvas shoes. Its soft and comfortable. And I am pretty surprised at the leather quality. Initially I thought it will show tears and scuffs in no time, but having wearing it almost everyday now, it still looks well-maintained!! Looks like some Obenauf's Leather Oil is a good treat for it!

Shall leave it to dry and perhaps tomorrow it will all be ready for a shoe-brushing session!

Shortening a belt

Ok, I bought the belt from London as mentioned earlier. Supposedly to give to my dad as a gift but I bought another for him eventually which is from Massimo Dutti.

And since I got the basic tools, I can cut and finish (or burnish) the edges myself. :)

Point to note: As my belt was without any hole punches (I requested that from the seller), I have to trial and error the length that I want and cut it myself. A mistake I made was to punch the holes before I cut the length, which resulted in a few trials and errors. I wanted to get only 3 holes to have the simple look. But upon the first 3 holes made, I realised it was still too long for me and had to go a few holes inner to get it right. So take note guys, double confirm the length before you cut or punch the holes!

Comparing the swedish army belt that I always wear and the new belt

Getting the tools ready!

Burnishing the edges after cutting it  

Can you tell which is the original finished cut and which is mine? 

Here is the answer! :)

One of my EDC item, card holder

Looking GREAT after the oiling! My gosh! Beautiful..

DIY Card Holder

It's been a while since I've oiled them.

I realised that the front cover looks nice and shiny compared to the rear side. Could it be the rear side is the side that's facing my rear when put in my back pocket?

To better illustrate how I place them in my jeans pocket:


                        |                      |                                         |                                       |

                        |                      |                                         |                                       |
Outside World | Jeans pocket | Front side of card holder | Rear side of card holder | My bum

                        |                      |                                         |                                       |

                        |                      |                                         |                                       |

Oh well, bad illustration, I know. 

Anyway here are the pictures:

Front

Rear; See what I meant?

Obenauf's Leather Oil to the rescue!

Leaving it to dry...

Card Holder : Updates

Here is the card holder which I repeatedly mentioned I did it myself *prouds*. Haha! Anyway, perhaps due to my new jeans, the indigo staining becomes almost black. Also, I never clean it before so I thought I would just clean it with the Obenauf's Leather Cleaner to see what "magic" it can do. Seriously I don't expect much though.

Here's how it looks like now:

Using the Obenauf's Leather Cleaner with a clean sponge

A generous amount of spray to the leather:

After some scrubbing and rubbing, leaving it to dry:

After a few hours, the leather was dried completely. You can tell whether is it still wet. If its still wet, the leather feels soft and cool. When its totally dried, it feels rigid and warm to touch. That's how I determine whether is it dry or not. If you want to play it safe, you leave it over night to be sure it dries off naturally. DO NOT USE HAIR DRYER or such TO BLOW IT DRY!

After its totally dry:

 Rubbed some Obenauf's LP into them: 

On a sidenote: noticed the people playing basketball in the background? seems like more people are into basketball recently.. Jeremy Lin effect? lol. anyway its a great sport and its good to see people getting more into sports. Keep going!

DIY Project: External Harddisk Case

Recently, I bought a MacBook Pro to replace my dying desktop and also wanted to give it a shot at the widely acclaimed Mac OSX. It is really excellent and not difficult to get used to, coming from a PC user for the past few decades. The thing I like about Max OSX is the Time Machine. It keeps track of your activities and data changes so that in the event you wanted to "go back in time" to either retrieve some accidentally deleted data or, just for the fun of it, you can just go to the Time Machine and "travel back in time!"

Hang on a sec, I'm not doing a tech blog, I'm doing a leather blog! Well for this project, I decided to make a case (not a drop-proof, shock-proof case) to house my newly acquired Western Digital Elements 1TB External Hard disk. It comes in a default black color so I though why not do a white leather case for it.

And here goes, the final outcome:

Lots of practice to go!

Till then~

DIY Card Holder : Updates

This is the card holder that I made it myself *prouds* 2 months ago. In less than 10 weeks, the evo of the leather is already so amazing. I can't wait to see how it will evolve in time to come.

Just look at it...

 Somehow I just find this looks like bikini tan lines. LOL.

The thing I like about veg-tan leather is this. Seeing the leather changes from pinkish to this dark deep yet subtle brown. Love it!

DIY Project: Leather Tray

Hello everyone. As I looked through the leather remnants that I got, I decided to make something useful out of it. So I decided to make a Leather Tray this time round.

It's much more simple than my first project and from the experience of it, I learnt that this leather is too soft for such leathercrafting, hence I decided to stick 2 ply together.

Here's the final product:

Some of my EDCs shown here as well. :)

The stitching

Now my table looks SLIGHTLY neater all thanks for this tray. 

And I am thinking of what to embark on next. Some suggestions perhaps? Simple for a beginner like me yet fun to work on. Hope to get some good ideas from you guys/girls.. 

Till then, Adios!

DIY Project : Wallet

Finally got my hands on the tools required for leather crafting and the first project that I embarked on, a wallet.

It was an ambitious one for a beginner like me as I have absolutely NO IDEA on how to go about doing it. All I can do is to reverse engineer it from my existing wallet and pray it won't come out looking like crap.

Lots of trial and errors during the process

Using the leather remnants. It's a waste to let these precious leather go to rubbish bin.

After 4 hours of work, finally something that vaguely looks like a wallet came about:

Nope. I'm not an Indonesian.. Just using some notes from my Bintan Tour earlier to cover up the bad-looking stitching.

The leather was difficult to work on because it was very thin and soft. There are portions where 5 layers of leather were overlapping and it was yet fairly easy to sew. This shows how soft it was. Not an ideal leather to work on for small leather goods.

All in all, it was an interesting experience and thrilled to be able to get my hands on the tools.

Card Holder - Workshop conducted by Obbigoodlabel (Part 2)

As you know, I always treat my leather with the necessary (necessary and babying them are 2 different matters :)) TLC they need.

Hence, after last night session of making the card holder, today I went on to apply Obenauf's leather oil on them and a coating of Heavy Duty LP (com'on, I bought the combo pack months ago and there are still a lot of them left)

Here are the pictures in just 1 day, with Oil and LP added:

The horizontal thin leather was the one that darkens the most first. I hope this will evolve into something thats unique and amazing.

And here is a picture of my favourite part. As you know, I like leather with unique grains, scars and even cuts. This nice grain happen to be on the frontmost and I just simply adore it!

Note the inverted "Y" looking grain there? Lovely, isn't it?

More pictures for today: