In a final all-in investment into my leatherworks, I realized if I wanted to turn it into something sustainable, valuable & unique, I had to invest myself differently into my creations.
They had all 3 qualities to some extent, but they lacked power, intensity & magnitude in them.
Once I was able to give my creations a refined edge, by gathering the know-how as to the options & trying them out, I recognized that an essential ingredient had been found. They now looked finished. They looked coherent. A proper edge finish truly marries all components together in a way that is subtle but powerful.
I felt confident at this stage, that what I had to offer fulfilled every check-box that I could pour into durability & professional craftmanship.
But while every piece was unique, it was not truly a reflection of my most authentic & intimate self. These were creations that fulfilled expectations on some level, quiet, polite but slightly rebellious. I'll add 3 examples below. I made about 10 different wallets in this series, that to me have this flavor, complete, confident, finished but more reflective of the domesticated "me".
The Edge-Paints somehow led me to discover Leather Acrylic Paints, professional grade leather paints specifically designed for extreme durability on leather, which requires a special formulation to make the paint flexible enough to bend with the leather as it gets used & exposed to wear.
The Piece that opened that Door for me, was my curiosity of figuring out a way to apply silver leaf to leather, I had already done so in the past on my own leather hat, gilding the inside with copper leaf & small amounts of silver leaf, that experiment was a semi-success, it was surprisingly quite durable even after wearing my hat almost daily for a couple of months when I just applied it, some of it began to rub off maybe after 6 months, the copper began to oxidize green/blue where it was in contact with the hair & sweat from the forehead. I had not applied any top-coat to the metal leaf in this case & I had used gilding glue to adhere it to the leather. Now about 2 years after it is still partly covering the hat but other parts the gilders glue is now showing revealing patches of leather that is now super tacky & sticky.
This time I tried a different attempt, I used the Leather Top-Coat that comes for the leather acrylic paints as the glue & as the final varnish to protect the silver leaf, that experiment birthed a very precious masterpiece of mine. I called this wallet "The Red King", the Effect preceding the Cause.
Metal fused to Leather, the method I used here is going to be very durable & long-lasting. I doubt it will ever rub off unless someone drags their wallet across the pavement on a regular basis. Half a booklet of pure silver leaf went into this one. On the Inside I added a touch of real Copper Leaf using the same method.
This one was shouting already a lot more with the colors & textures that truly reflect authentically my inner being.
This last wallet opened a door, an understanding, a shift. From here came these.
In December I was giving them Laser Printed Serial-Numbers, now in January I am Stamping them with my Artist Signature.
Leather has become the Canvas for my Art & Expression. From Luxurious Accessories life gave me permission to & showed me a path to creating Genies that Live in Leather.
I feel these scream unapologetically the textures & colors of my soul, these last ones are pieces of functional art not simply stitched by hand with thread, but stitched with my soul exposed naked & bare.
The Leather cut by hand, assembled by hand in the right order, glued with a mild leather adhesive(the glue is merely there to hold it together for poking the stitching holes & until it is stitched), then painting the leather by hand, finally stitching it by hand using the king of stitches namely the saddle-stitch & finally giving it all the last touches applied by hand.
If you enjoyed this short resume of the evolutions that have been developing, you might enjoy exploring the cosmology of my skunkdom by visiting my official website which has been metamorphosing along with my creations.
Also on my Youtube Channel I post videos in which you can follow along some of the creation process, for example here you see the creation of one my most recent pieces, set to my own original music production.
Wish you a beautiful day,
King Artin the Skunkwizard of "House Qiparosa"