Chase Handcraft

Let’s start this one off with a joke…

What’s the king of the pencil case?

“The Ruler”

Wow, it has been a few weeks since my last post.  I guess adding school into the mix has really eaten away at the little free time that I had.

On with the fun…here is my idea of a simple leather pencil case…

Still being new to leather craft, I wanted to try something fairly simple, yet something that was my own design.  So, off to Pinterest I went…I came across a few similar ideas to use as a base and started to draw up what I had in my mind.  In addition to trying something new, I wanted to try my hand at dying leather.  This turned out to be an incredible learning experience, not only in the act of applying the dye.  But also in paying closer attention to the imperfections in the leather itself, and either lay out the pieces to be cut around these imperfections, or purchase a higher quality piece of leather.

I also burnished the edges of this piece with a burnishing tool and Gum Tragacanth, which was also a first for me.

As you can see by the photo, this case holds 5 pencils.  I imagine it could also hold pens, but it was designed to fit pencils.

I have also made a slightly different version of this case in black with cream thread.  Porter has taken it to school before I was able to take a photo, so I will add it at a later date.

Next project…a different version of the bi-fold wallet.  It may be a few weeks out, as I need to dedicate some time to getting back into running.  I don’t want to hold back my wife and sister-in-law during a race we are running in April.