I Designed This Mask Recently While I Was Feeling In A Mood For Some Halloween Creepy Crawlies. The Centipedes

I designed this mask recently while I was feeling in a mood for some Halloween creepy crawlies. The centipedes are made with a bookbinding stitch called a caterpillar stitch, which I've used on a few things.

Here it is for sale. I'm not sure if I'll make another one with the same design. I'd like to make more, but I'm enamored with the idea of rearranging the centipedes differently on each one I make.

I was prompted to design this mask by a vague request by a friend who's involved in running an ongoing live-action role playing game that happens out in the woods somewhere. It may at some point pop up as part of a costume in that game.

The design I did as a sort of reference to "The Tyger" by William Blake. It's got lots of little flame shapes cut through to make the stripes, and some stitching to pull it into the right shape overall.

It's available on my Etsy store!

This dragon tail commission was pretty straightforward compared to others I've done recently. It's made of anodized aluminum, primarily green, with an underbelly of brown and a single line of brown down the spine. As always, the scales are linked together with stainless steel rings in a chainmail pattern. This one is 30 inches long, slightly smaller than my default length. Good for someone who's a bit shorter than I.

I had a lot of fun getting photos of it swinging around.

Daylight Savings Time meant that it was dark by the time I was able to get photos taken, but oh well. I'll be shipping this out to the commissioner tomorrow.

Craftsmanship and Scope

Someone recently asked me a question. It was a reasonable question for someone to ask, but it was one that is worrying to me because the question somewhat leans towards a direction that I've been carefully avoiding. This was it: "What's the limit on leather objects? Like what can't they do?" Sadly, I don't have a very satisfying answer. Leather is a rather versatile material, and there are a lot of craftsmen who make vastly different types of pieces with it. There are people who make clothing, bags, wallets, masks, jewelry, armor, saddles, belts, lots of other things; and each of these uses different techniques and materials. The skills someone develops to make one set of products may not be applicable to another sort of item. I consider myself to be pretty new to leather; I've been working with it seriously for less than a year. I have been carefully working in ways that allow me to apply skills that I have learned from other areas of crafting in order to make polished products that other people are not making. But the range of techniques and materials I'm experienced with is still relatively small, because it takes time to figure out new techniques. So I'm not yet especially versatile. I'm OK with that, though. I used to want to be a jack of all trades. I tried to do everything--pottery, drawing, knitting, beading, weaving, sculpting, wood working, you name it. And I still occasionally want to learn new and exciting skills. But after watching the successes and failures of certain ventures, and after much thought, I've learned to be careful with that. I've come to the conclusion that, as someone trying to sell my stuff, it's better to achieve mastery in a small set of skills, and to develop a coherent line of products to put forward in that vein. The more different stuff you do, the harder it is to explain yourself to potential customers. And if you promise commissioners that you can do anything, then every project will be strenuous and unpleasant. So to answer the original question: I can't give a listing of what leather can't do, because I don't even know all of what leather can do. And even if I could list out what can be done with leather, I myself could only promise to be competent at a small fraction of that. Nobody's an expert at everything. Me, I'm pretty good at designing patterns to cut into various materials and then constructing them together into 3D forms. I've had a good amount of practice doing this with a bunch of different materials, and have developed a few methods that seem to be broadly applicable. But it's only been in the last year that I've been working with leather. As time goes on I'm slowly learning more tricks, and the range of things I can make is increasing. And people should feel free to describe something and ask me if I can do it, of course. But I can't do everything. I'm intentionally keeping my scope somewhat narrowed, both for my sake and for the sake of my customers.

This is another of my older mask designs, but again one that I like a lot. The slashing diagonal slits over the eyes work like shutter shades, so you can see through them pretty easily, but they obscure your eyes from view. I think of it as a subtly sinister design that would fit in reasonably with goth/punk or fetish outfits. I'd expect to see this mask worn by a villain, not a hero.

This mask takes a bit longer to form than others of the simple masks I make. Getting the little bars that go over the eyes to bulge outwards evenly takes some care. But I think the effect is worth it.

This mask could be yours!

This dragon tail is made with anodized titanium scales, which the commissioner special-ordered and sent to me. This is definitely the most beautiful material I've worked with. There were 5 different colors of titanium used here, but because of the way the anodizing works there is a good amount of color variation from one scale to the next, or even within a single scale. It gives the whole piece a cool iridescent appearance.

This tail also has a stainless steel underbelly, which will match with the chrome spikes that I'll be installing down the spine. But I wanted to get photos of it before I did that.