goodeknight said:
LOVE this pic, Tundra.
Looks like you treated the leather to give it a little more brown than olive.
Tag looks great, too.
Thank you, goodeknight! Actually the brownish hue to the top straps is all from the pack naturally aging. The straps are originally painted or dyed green, and then the years (and the mileage
) takes it's toll.
At first blush, this may appear to be a simple project, even more so, as it is a very
small project. Perhaps if I had a machine stamp to imprint and cut the leather, it would be simple. But this is all done by hand, beginning with a raw piece of leather.
Layout and design: After measuring and drawing the label shape and stitching lines, I imprint the letters. I then hand cut the letters as seen below. (You can see the numerous attempts and changes I went through on the left)
Though I had originally placed periods after each initial, I decided to drop them later. Monograms usually don't have periods and I couldn't tell one way or another from the screen shots. It looks cleaner without them. (You can see the periods in the earlier versions above)
Painting and distressing After hand-stamping around the letters and hand-punching the thread holes, it's time for paint. I layer several colors of antique white and light green on the letters first and then layer several more colors and shades of greens, mustard, reds and browns over the entire label. Then, I sand the letters until the shades underneath come through. I sand the edges until it looks like it has been through the same travels as the rest of the pack. Finally, I antique it with Pecards mixed with brown furniture polish.
Color matching: You can't get a color like this right out of the bottle. There's a lot of mixing and experimenting to get the color to match the existing shade of the pack leather. The leather on my naturally distressed bag is extremely varied from one part of the pack to another. I match the strap color that is right next to the patch, which helps the label fit into the overall look of the bag better. If this were a new bag, or any different bag, for that matter, the paint mixing would be very different.
Sewing it on: I'm sure there are more modern and easier ways to do this, but this is where I am at. After dirtying up the thread with the Brown Pecards, I handstitch the label on using one long thread with a needle on each end.
The entire process is pretty time consuming for such a small thing.
As far as "reference pics" go, there are few available. The pic I posted in my original post (and above) is my actual bag and label. Here's the best reference pic I could come up with.:
Michael