Transcripts
1. Intro: Hello And thanks for bringing me. My name is Carly. I am the owner and designer behind the accessories brand crave by CRB. I'm most known for creating tassels out of repurposed materials and the one that put me on the map, so to speak, is leather. I'm excited to share with you some of my culture techniques for working with this material . How to source it in an eco friendly way. How to make your own mother tassels and how to use them to design and make your own jewelry in this class will be completing and necklace and earring set, but you should gain plenty of inspiration to keep on creating more.
2. Tools & Supplies: to complete this project only the following materials. Leather. You can buy a small piece of your local craft store, but my favorite medium of choice was an ugly old purse jacket were couch. If you live in a city with a leather of pollster or tannery, you may be able to source unusable scraps from them, too. However, they tend to be a little thicker and a little stiffer. I personally like using an apparel weight leather best for jewelry making flu. Here's what will work best, so you don't have to waste as much time or money as I have in the adhesive ill leather cement. This is my glue of choice, and there are lots of types to choose from this equal flow version from tan you others. But I typically used for our purposes. Today, this type of glue works best when it hearing to wrong sides of 11 together for a right and a wrong side. An all purpose glue like Elmer's will work well in a pinch. Superglue Scios, No AC relate is the name of the game here. It dries quickly so you don't have a lot of time to monkey around with it, but it's also what will hold up the best. This type of glue, especially comes in handy when working with leather that has a shiny or slippery finish. So I dont be extra careful. This stuff is seriously sticky, hence why it's called Super Glue. Fumes are not great for you, and it really sucks when you get it on your fingers. Glue spreader or Popsicle stick a lighter cord or chain. This will be the base of our necklace again, up cycling in school. Dig through your current jeweler sash and give new life to pieces that you no longer wear. Jewelry Findings. Jump rings your wires. I pins all in your finish of choice. You should be able to find anything and everything you need in your local, perhaps store or get thrifty in steel small pieces from an old piece of jewelry. Jewell requires the ruler and a pen, sharp scissors and very speeds. I found these in biblical craft store and on that seat, optional but super helpful. And exactly I've been cutting that
3. A Little About Leather: a word on leather before we dive in. Let's talk a little bit about the main material at hand. Weather can be made from just about any animal skin for the most common is cow hide. There are a couple different ways leather is treated, and this process is called a tanning. There are a couple of different ways it can be done. Chrome or vegetable. There's a lot of information out there about these methods. Here are the basics. Chrome tanning is a chemical process, using acids insults to preserve the leather and give it color. This is a relatively quick process that provides the leather with bright, vibrant colors won't between a month with time. This is the most common method for garment leather and is known for creating wastewater. Included water raise. Vegetable tanning is a plant based process that preserves the leather. This method takes much longer but has a lower environmental impact. It leaves the leather of the thicker and stiffer field typically used for leather goods and accessories. The colors will be much more muted, and Pitino, with time and use up cycling is cool. My preferred method of training materials is very purpose ing. It's a greenest way to create provides an interesting back story. Also, if you've never worked with leather before, I highly recommend jumping in with cheaper means of materials. First pro tip. Buy a bag of scraps. Ripped open old person lover coat. It kind of sucks to make mistakes with expensive materials. Mother is a fun material to work with, but it takes some getting used to. If you've never used it before, you'll notice that each side of leather is quite different unless you're working with suede . One side is smooth and shiny, the other is fuzzy and fibrous, just like fabrics and weather has a right and wrong side. The right side is smooth, wrong side, disposing for our projects at hand. We want pieces of leather, their flat and free from deep wrinkles. This will give us a smooth looking fringe free from waves. However, it's hard to ship or store perfectly flat piece. So here are a couple ways to smooth your materials. You can press it underneath a stack of heavy books and leave it there for a few days. For a timelier fix, grab an iron and a clean, calm shirt with the wrong side of the leather facing up. Cover with a piece of cotton material or press cloth and iron gently on medium heat. Wait for it to cool and you're ready to go.
4. How to Make Leather Tassels: When choosing leather, keep in mind only one large piece. The length should be your desired fringe length. The wits should be, however, why do you want your tassel to be and working with a piece that measures two inches by four inches? Start by flipping over your piece of leather so that the fuzzy side is facing up. This is the wrong side for the underside of the material. Measure down about 3/8 of an inch from the top of your piece and draw guideline with a pen or a piece of chalk. If you're using a dark color mother the line to go all the way across, this is the point of no return and will serve as a reminder to stop cutting when it comes time to make her fringe. Next, we'll draw some lines of where we do want to cut thes lines will be perpendicular to her first by line start by spacing out the desired with of your fringe. I personally prefer it to be a bit narrow between 1/4 of an inch and threes so we'll start marking every quarter of an inch or so along the original guideline. Now it's time to start cutting using scissors or an Exacto knife in a ruler, Start on one end and cut along each line, making sure to stop your original mark. This keeps the fringe held together and gives us a base to wrap around her necklace. Next, we need to cut out our attachment piece. This should be about 1/4 of an inch by two inches. Grab your glue. It's about to get sticky. Move your small attachment piece in half to create the loop. Hold it in place to secure now glue on the end of your tassel, make sure the loop is facing outward. This will be holding our tassels, so you want to make sure it's secure before moving on. The key here is to glue a little bit at a time. Spread some glue within the top guideline of your fringe and start rolling the tassel onto itself. Make sure your loop is well secured. Keep gluing and rolling to create a rounder. Tassel. Squish the loop as you roll and adjusted to have more of a round shape. Keep rolling firmly to make sure it stays together. Once you get to the end, remove any excess glue and hold in place for a few seconds. Congrats. You just made a tassel. I'll need a few more tassels for my jewelry designs. A total of five, and I want them to be a little bit smaller. I'm going to use a piece that measures one inch by three inches. Care to walk through the steps again, this time a little faster now on to assembly.
5. Design & Assemble Your Necklace: now that we've made our tassels and grab your supplies and let's start assembling, let's start with the earrings. I'll be using your wires, wood beads, jump rings, I pins and, of course, tassels. To complete this design, I'll start a string of wood bead onto a metal I pin next, using the wire cutter portion of my pliers and going to remove excess wire. Don't go too crazy here. We still need a little extra inter. Create about 3/8 of an inch to 1/2 inch. Clamp onto the edge of the wire with the tip of your pliers and rotate to create a loop with a wire. Continue rotating until the loop has been closed onto itself. Let's do it one more time for the other earring. Grab your ear wire. We're going to start connecting everything together. Release the loop on the year wire and attach the loop you just created with the I pin and would deed. This will be the top part of her earring. Underneath will add the tassel, and we'll just need a small jumping for that. Simply open up the jump a ring and attach it to the loop on your tassel, unattached. The jump A ring to the bottom ring of the I pin slash would beat combo. I like to keep this, you know the tassel pointing towards the back. We'll repeat with the other one, closing the jumping, and you've got yourself some chic new earrings onto the necklace I love Using the skinny court for long necklaces started measuring where you'd like it to lay 30 to 34 inches is usually a good place to start, willing to use a lighter to burn the ends to prevent it from fraying. Smooth the agile to warm to create point. This will help us threat beads through more easily. I like to start out by laying out my design to get an idea of what it will look like. I'm using three small tassels to large wood beads and two small wood beads, the same ones I used for the earrings. All we have to do from here is thread them onto the court. I'm using my pliers to slightly expand the hole in the beads as well as open up the opening in the tassels. One more small bead at the end will make her necklace adjustable just drink both strands of the cord through entire knocked. Be sure to pull tight look acute. They looked together. Last but not least, I would use the change from an old necklace and the larger tassel we made first to create a new necklace. All we have to do is remove the old findings from the chain using a set of pliers. Keep that stuff. You may find a use for it later. Attach of jumping to the tassel, and if your chain is skinny enough, you might be able to thread it right onto the train. This one is a little thicker, so we'll find the middle and attached the tassel onto that ring. All done and so free. Thank you. Now that you know how to make a leather tassel on how to turn them into jewelry, take a look around and you'll start noticing all sorts of things you can do with them. Player on a size color material attachments and where the heck to put them from jewelry to key chains, too. Shoes and suitcases. I'm a firm believer. That fringe makes everything more fun. I'd love to see what you create post photos of your masterpieces in the your projects portion of this class, or show me an instagram happy creating
Carli Vergamini, up-cycler extraordinaire
