Make Your Own Handmade Leather Keychain!

1. Welcome to the class: Welcome to the class. I'm really happy to have you in this class. I'll show you how you can make a very simple handmade leather keychain. Key chains are among the easiest leather working projects you can make. They're also great because of many reasons. They don't require a lot of materials and tools. You can build them really fast. They move really well amongst consumers. And you can even make them from leftovers from large leather projects. There's nothing wrong when using leather leftovers for small projects. Leather is a fine material. It comes in different prices, but as raw material, it is usually of good quality. Also, leftovers don't spoil. They're simply smaller pieces that are no longer needed for the main project or that came out from cutting larger ones. In this case, however, we are not considering leftovers for these small projects, since we are using shell Cordovan. Considered as one of the finest layers in the world, leaving a large amount of leftovers from shell Cordovan is simply a luxury we cannot afford. So without any further ado, let's begin to build our key chain. 2. Cutting the leather: As you can see from the Cordovanym using, I selected a small part on one of the edges of the leather, since this is all the amount of material we're going to need for the exterior part of the key chain. Because of this, the first thing to do is to cut out a portion of the leather you're going to use. Make this to have a more manageable piece at hand. Since working with a larger piece will only make it harder to move and awards. Use a cutting ruler to cut your piece with an exact knife. You can also use some scissors if the leather is soft enough. However, this leather is quite firm and that makes it harder to cut with a pair of scissors. Besides cutting with some scissors can damage your leather and bend it when cutting it. I like to use the ruler upside down because as you can see here, the cord is glued behind the ruler leaves a space between the metal and the leather. This space generates a shadow in the leather and that shadow can misguide you if you don't have enough lighting to see exactly where you're cutting. When I place a ruler upside down, the metal is in contact with the leather and no shadow is generated. Remember to always cut safely. Whether you're using your ruler upside down or straight, always be patient when cutting. Even if you have years of experience working with these tools, always be careful. Another reason to go slowly is because you want a clean cut. You don't want to have a curved or irregular side and your leather. Make this process with patients. It will be worth it in the end. Now that you have a smaller manageable piece to work with, user preferred exacto knife to cut out the leather. Look how I'm using another exacto knife as in the previous one. This is because the blades of this new one are sharp and its width makes it more economic to handle all the way. So you don't have to invest a lot of money in your tools as long as they're in good condition and you feel comfortable working with them. Again, with these cuts, go slow, patient and always keep your fingers behind the blade when you're cutting the leather. Once you've got a letter, let's see how to line it in the next lesson. 3. Lining the leather: To start lending the key chain, I suggest you use a very thin type of leather. What I'll be using now is white co skin. The thickness of this particular piece is approximately 0.8 to 1 millimeter. Because this leather is so thin and soft, you can easily cut it with some scissors. Unlike the outer part, this leather won't get damaged that way. Place your outer side on top of the lining leather and with a leather pen, draw the entire perimeter of the side. Make sure both leathers are facing their inner side while doing this. Next glue bot inner sides of the leathers and carefully join them together. Let the glue sit for at least 10 minutes. You can apply some pressure by adding some weight to both pieces while they're gluing. When the pies are set, would your scissors or an exact knife gently cut the excess of lining and try to leave the edge as even as possible? 4. Preparing the keychain: The first thing to do with the leather once it's ready is to mark the stitching lines. To begin with, place the metal ring in its position to see how the kitchen will behave once it's fully closed. This way, you can see where it's convenient to start stitching. If the stitches are too close to the metal ring, the kitchen will feel very tight and you won't be able to turn the ring freely. Okay. Set your windy vial to 3 millimeters and use your template to draw an offset line inside the margin of the template. Then from the middle of the template to the offset mark, draw a perpendicular line at half an inch. Make sure this line is as straight as possible. If you have a grit mat, you can use it as a guide to do this as you can see in the video. Now, we just scratch I'll make the two points where the line intersects with the offset line. The idea is to then pass the same marks to the keychain, so you know exactly where to start stitching and where to stop and close the stitch. Mark those points and use your wing divider to draw an offset line of 3 millimeters in the leather. This will be your guideline for stitching. Because this is a very small project, we want the stitches to be as fine as possible. Also, 3 millimeters from the edge of the leather is a good distance to use thin thread, such as 0.6 millimeters or less. For this project, I use a two pronged perking. You can get this at many different sizes and light diamonds. These irons only mark where you have to place each stitch in the project. To use them, you place the prekini on top of the leather and use your polymal to slightly mark your keychain. Then with a diamond scratch all perforate each stitch by hand. With this done, we can now move to the next lesson, where we'll see how to make the heart of the key chain. Okay. 5. Making the heart of the keychain: The heart of a key chain is the inner leather piece that will give structure and volume to your product. It can be made from leather or softer materials such as foam to obtain the form of the heart, use a template and wing divider to offset a contra line 3 millimeters for the stitching line to the center of the template. Understand Once you've done this, tics drew with your scissors. You can remark them with your pencil if you wish. Place a template in a scrap piece of leather. We'll use some vegetable ten leather since it's a more rigid material. Draw the template over the leather and with your exact a knife carefully and slowly cut the piece. If you have any circles in your design, you can cut them by doing small cuts as you see here. Straight lines can be cut with your ruler and knife. A The piece is totally straight from the edges once cut. So I suggest you use an edge peveler to round those edges. This makes a huge difference to the product, since once inside, you can feel the edge with your fingers if it's not rounded. Use your wing divider once more to offset 6 millimeters from the outside of your keychain to the center to locate where you will place the heart and draw the offset so you don't get lost if it's not so visible. 6. Painting the small sides: Before stitching the key chain is important to paint the small sides. This is because once the metal ring is set, it becomes much harder to do so, and you could easily stain parts of the key chain you don't want to, and it becomes more difficult to polish as well. To paint them, use your edge applicator and carefully add the coats of your preferred color. In this case, I'm using a white hel paint and have found that for this type of paint, it is necessary to add at least two coats. However, the result is beautiful. It gives a made finish to the edges and this makes the leather product look quite elegant. Okay. Once the paint is applied, let the letter piece sit vertically for at least ten to 15 minutes or until the paint is completely dry. 7. Glueing and preparing the stitching holes: Before starting to glue the leather, if you have any logo or hot stump you want to put on your keychain, this is the time to do it. Since the leather is still flat and it's easily manageable. For this project, I have put my brand logo in the front part of the keychain using a custom made brass logo stamp. The next thing to do is to prepare the inner part of the keychain in order to glue everything together. Well. Use a s paper to send the inner part that will glue the heart of the keychain at the sides. I'm using a 320 s grid paper. Then add glue inside the back part of the key chain and the heart and stick them together. Okay. Bend the front part just enough to let the metal rings in the inner part of the leather and on add more glue to the sides and the inner front part of the key chain and place them together. Okay. With your fingers, try to push the sides harder so that the glue can sit well everywhere. Oh. Finally, we need to make the holes of the stitching throughout the entire keychain. You can use a polyploc to place a key chain and with your diamond stitch all perforate each hole. Be careful of the condition of your polyploc. As I'll show you here, if you put the keychain directly to the polyploc and it's a rough condition, it can damage your surface. B. Notice the small dots that are now present in the leather. To avoid this, place a piece of cardboard on your template and begin perforating the keychain. This way, the backside of the product will be protected from my damage. In the next lesson, we'll see our key chain stitched and we will continue to paint the edges and so finish our project. 8. Finishing the keychain: As you can see, the keychain is now stitched and the only thing left to do is to take care of the sides. After stitching the keychain, try to leave the edges as even as possible. You can do this with a sandpaper as you saw previously or use a motor tool to go faster. I like using my dermal to do this because it's much faster. If you're going to do so, remember to always use a mask. Once the entire edge is even with your edge bevel, carefully remove the sharp edges to make the entire keychain rounded. Next, you can paint the edge with you prefer edge paint using the same process with the with the small sites in the previous lesson. You can also leave the edges in natural color by not applying any paint and burnishing the led directly. When you finish applying the paint, let it sit until it totly dry and polish it with a clean cloth of canvas and some burnishing gum. Was it the final result in the next lesson? 9. Final result and final project: A We've now finished our keychain. As you can see the project, is quite easy to make. It really doesn't take a lot of time and you can become very creative by choosing different kinds of finishes on the edges and on the color of the thread. For this class project, begin by designing your own template. I suggest you do this by using some cable paper or cardboard, so when you have to pass it to a letter, the paper is strong enough and won't bend easily. Also, if you haven't seen my class on how to make your own water template, I suggest you watch it so you could have another reference on the subject. Thank you so much for watching this class. I hope you have enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next one.