Author Archives: joel

Here are a couple of other leather projects I've completed recently. One is a case for my phone. That one was wet-formed from vegetable-tanned leather over a wooden stand-in I created of my phone. The inside is lined with black felt to keep my screen from getting scratched. The bottom pictures are of a minimalist wallet I made from some thin chrome-tanned leather. Even really thin store-bought wallets are too bulky for me - I like to carry as little as possible. This one is basically just two card sleeves that fold in the middle. The whole thing is less than a quarter the thickness of my old one. It remains to be seen how well it holds up to daily use. I've been using it for about a month now, and so far so good.

The kids and I have been learning to play the Pokemon card game lately, and we made a bunch of these letter deck boxes to hold our Pokemon decks, dice, damage counters, etc. They're actually really easy to make - they're all one piece of leather, wet-formed and riveted together. I made two or three, and Carter made a couple too. We had a hard time getting the leather to stain evenly - but upon further research I think it comes out a lot better if the leather is slightly damp when you apply the stain. We'll have to try that next time.