One More New Medallion...

By special request I made a Green Comet (friendship award). BMDL (SCA). I really like how this one came out. Tooled and painted leather. Green and black cording was donated.

New award medallions

Life has been busy as of late but I did manage to squeeze out a few award medallions. These are tooled, dyed, and painted leather. They are pretty simple but I like how they came out. I gave these away as gifts at the Delftwood and BMDL (Barony-Marche of the Debatable Lands) investitures (SCA). I am also working on an extended tutorial showing how I make these. I hope to have that done and posted this week.

For Delftwood: Shown are, Order of Capstan (Arts and Science, pictured upper left), Order of the Whirligig (Youth service, pictured middle right), and Order of the Millguard (Martial Arts, pictured lower left).  

For BMDL: Shown are a Red Comet (Martial Arts), and a Gold Comet (Service).

Baronial court "stuff" chest

This is a project that I just pounded out for my first Baronial Court. The leather work is actually part of an old project that I never finished but figured I could give it new life in this project.

The trunk is a off the shelf "hobby" trunk that I stained. I also built and inserted wooden dividers to help organize the stuff inside.I left the dividers plain wood because I thought it looked nice, but perhaps it just make its look unfinished. I am not a woodworker or an artist, but it is at least functional.

 The leather work is tooled, the background dyed with leather dye, and the dragon painted. The leather dye has started to darken so the green and black does not stand out as much as it could. Partially because of the age of the project, but also because of the original green dye I was using at the time.

Golden Alce Medallions

Just finished up a quick last minute project for the Kingdom (Kingdom of AEthelmearc - SCA). Six brand new Golden Alce medallions. The Golden Alce is a Award of Arms level award for Merit in the martial arts (fencing, armored combat, archery, etc). The medallions are tooled and painted leather. I was pretty happy with how they turned out. The woven cords are the work of Lady Miriel du Lac who was gracious enough to assist me with that much needed element.

The discoloration in the first photo is a result of the water used during tooling. I had just finished tooling these when I took the picture.

Court Baroness Coronet

My latest project was a Court Baroness coronet for my good friend Mistress Ysabeau Tiercelin (now Baroness). As I have said before I am not much of an artist so settling on the cosmetic aspects of this project was a challenge for me. I went back and forth on design, the basic pattern, and color scheme for a while (too long given the tight deadline) and finally came up with this. The main coronet is very basic (I think maybe too basic in hindsight) and the primary feature is the tooled personal heraldry on the front.

The tooling is some of the smallest detailed tooling I have done to date (the Horse is about an inch tall) and I was very happy with it. I was almost sad I had to paint it but I did like the “pop” the color gave the finished project. The paint job was not my best. A few spots of the white primer are peeking out here and there and some of the paint is thicker than I like. It is hard to notice in person but it will forever haunt my nightmares.  It was a tight deadline and I should have spent less time debating on the design and more time painting.

I had another plan for mounting The “Pearls” on the top but I was concerned about durability with an untested method so I went with something I could trust on a mechanical level. Each Pearl is mounted to the inside of the coronet on a stainless steel pin. I turned the end of each pin over to for a hook that was then sunk into the leather. Over each pin I glued a soft leather tab to cover the pin cosmetically and to firmly anchor the pin and pearl in place.

As with most projects it was a learning experience and given the chance I would do several things differently but the project seemed well received. 

Thanks for looking!

Rose belt completed...and a bit of confusion cleared up...

Finished the belt with the tooled tip. There was a bit of confusion on the belt and the number of roses. I only had time to do three on the tip. A few folks thought the roses covered the entire belt. Sorry for any confusion on that. Sadly the belt needed to be done by Pennsic and three roses (which matches the persons heraldry) is all I could muster time for. 

Still I was very happy with the final result. 

A new project ends my posting dry spell...

Always with the long delays between updates. I really need to get better with that. So for today here is the start of a new project. Sorry for the bad photo I was moving quickly to the next step and wanted to capture an in progress shot. This going to be a belt with a tooled heraldic tip.