With the New Year comes new projects!

Going back a couple years I promised my lady Thalia I would make her a favor to wear. To add to this, I set out on a personal quest as well. Our Baronial archery group, The Hael Hounds, has a weekly contest where archers shoot at a small red dot. The three archers that come closest to (or hit) the red dot are awarded a wolf token. I decided that I would shoot in my lady's honor until I had won 20 of these wolves in her name, then give her this token of my love along with my favor for her to wear. As with many things during the reign, time got away from me. However just this week I was able to finally make good on my promise. The favor is tooled and painted leather. The black portion is leather dye. The wolves are commercially available tokens.

Far too long - A quick update!

It has been far too long since I updated this blog. Life (both actual and Society) has kept me busy. I have worked on the odd non-creative project, but never found time to update the blog. I plan to improve on my productivity (project wise), but we will see what happens. I did manage to squeak out a project at the request of Edward Harbinger, completed for the The Scarlet Guard Inn archery festival at the Shire of Hornwood. A simple leather archery arm guard. Tooled and painted leather. Sorry for the quick photo. I finished the project just before leaving for the event and snapped a shot before getting in the car. The leather is dyed Ox blood, but looks darker in the photo. I had a little issue with the dye bleeding into the white paint. I forgot to seal the leather before painting and that caused the dye (Ox blood is a pain) to bleed into the white a bit. Not a huge issue, but the white was not as smooth as I can normally achieve. I was happy with the final project given the time I allowed by self to work on it (no I totally didn't wait until the minute).

Archery Arm Guard...prototype

Archery Arm Guard...prototype

To make up for being totally lazy today I decided to pound out the first prototype of a period archery guard. Based on an illumination from the 14th c. I make no claims to the depth of this research. I needed a starting point and I figured a period illumination was close enough to get running. Also pardon the sloppy tooling. I did it in like 20 minutes just so the guard would not end up simple leather. Really rough but just enough to give it a dry run so I can make tweaks