Old Shoe Leather for Crafting

Q: Can you use old shoe-leather for crafting?
A: Yes, if you don't mind rough, rustic and simple.

Q: Is it worth it?
A: No, not financially, but yes if you have an emotional attachment to the idea.

Q: Have you ever actually done it?
A: Yes, and I got a good story for my trouble.

You can definitely cut up your old leather shoes and use the leather in craft projects. But if the shoes are so old and worn out that you are willing to sacrifice them, the leather is probably old and dry, scuffed and cracked and generally not very pretty. Plus, it's time consuming to disassemble the shoes, the amount of leather recovered is minimal, and you'll spend even more time reconditioning the leather into a workable state.

But if you have a deep-seated need to use every scrap of resources, there are a few projects where old shoe leather is appropriate.

Jewlery Making Tutorial on Instructables

Just published a short tutorial on Instructables about using salvaged parts and e-waste to make jewelry. You've seen some of the projects here on the blog, but I go into more depth about the process and techniques used.

It's also the first time I reference my previous work. In this tutorial I point back to one of the simple tear-down videos. I've spent several months making a series of very basic how-to videos and tutorials. I now have a set of foundational guides I can refer back to. That way, I don't have to make every tutorial really long and detailed. I can just point back to one of the foundation series.

Check it out and let me know what you think (or any of my Instructables). I feel the need to go do some coding and welding now, so this might be the last jewelry based post for a few months. The 3d printer is also sitting in the corner taunting me for not playing with it for at least a month.

I've also got plans for more projects that use all the items from the foundation series. Drop me a note if you've seen any ideas proposed in the basic guides that you want to see turned into actual projects.

Then again, I might 3d print some jewelry to weld, so.....

Also find me on:
FACEBOOK -or- INSTRUCTABLES -or- YOUTUBE

Follow @tangoofthegeeks

Jewelry in Progress - Two More Experiments

Last time, I shared a piece of Goth jewelry I'm working on. That's not my usual style, as I noted in that post. Here's a couple more pieces I'm developing. One is a neutral tone antique look, the other is a high tech version of Steampunk.

A piece of antique random washer art and some hi-tech Steampunk - or at least the foundation for them.

Neither piece is finished, they're really just the base layer.

The round piece is a washer that I covered with paper that I cut to size with my old craft cutter machine. It's from a series of experiments I was doing - sort of forcing myself into randomness. I would slap some tear-outs from various magazines onto the cutting mat and cut randomly, then try to make something pretty from the results. It was meant to be an antidote to the precise, overly planned activities that my coding and 3d design require. And it sure was fun, so I might do that again.

The other piece is a scavenged PCB (circuit board) with a bright gold frame. I didn't realize it until too late, but I'm probably the only person who knows that the board is nearly flat and all the other stuff is added on. Only an electro-geek would know that... jeesh, what was I thinking. So I added an antique frame and stamp to steer it towards the Steampunk realm. I like the balance and rhythm of the objects, but no one will know that they came from me.

I didn't touch them today. I needed to cogitate and agitate a little first. I think I've got a plan now, but we'll see how it works out.







It seems that I'm trying to develop a new style, whether I really want to or not. I hesitate to even call it that, but that's what I get for trying new things. Normal people are starting tp create the types of stuff I did years ago, so now I'm trying to move beyond that. When I started doing Steampunk it was weird and people looked at it slightly askance. And I was okay with that. Now everyone is doing it and I've got to move on.

So I'm forced to try new things again... and I'm okay with that. And sure, my new stuff looks odd even to me. I haven't found a dependable visual vocabulary yet. I don't even know what the pieces are about, what their narrative is. I don't see other people doing it yet, so I don't really have anyone to steal from or prop my decisions against for surety. Basically I don't know what I'm doing yet.

It does seem, at least to me, that I'm repeatedly trying to marry different materials and time periods. The "style" hasn't congealed into anything coherent yet, though. I feel like I'm treading water, like I'm just slapping stuff together with no plan. And I'm okay with that. Sometimes things turn out well, even better than expected.

If you're trying something new, or want to, then that's what usually happens. I've been here before, so I'm comfortable. Just thought I would leave a note here for anyone else that's struggling to find their new thing... you're not alone ( and it's really kind of fun travelling without a map.)

Also find me on:
FACEBOOK -or- INSTRUCTABLES -or- YOUTUBE

Follow @tangoofthegeeks

Friday the 13th Jewelry

Missed posting this on Friday the 13th but going to show it now. Starting to make some new jewelry for an upcoming show. Not even sure if I'll be in the show, but it's a good excuse to try some new techniques.

The skull matched the dark depths of the scavenged LCD screen. I thought a silver clock face and a spot of red were good accents.

This isn't my usual style, but I needed something to offset the black square and a skull worked nicely. For some reason I felt all goth that day. Maybe it's just my attempt to balance the "natural tones" pieces that I'm making at the same time.

This piece is comprised of an upcycled LCD screen I scavenged from a teardown. It had a spooky, dark depth to it. And the screen becomes semi-transparent when a strong backlight is put behind it. I thought the black-and-white skull looked like it was floating on a pool of darkness.

I could never find a use for the silvery chrome clock faces before since most of my jewelry has a kind of antique or steampunk look. But the silver seemed to match the theme well.

And I had some old buttons I had scavenged from

T-Shirt Haiku from DIY Scraps

Create poetry with up-cycled T-shirt scraps. Turn your old tees into one-of-a-kind works of individualized art.

Someone donated a bunch of old T-shirts for my (failed) attempt at making 3d printed templates. So I found myself with lot's of tees that didn't fit me/ I slashed a few in my experiments, but I still had lots left over/

I figured I could make a few hoods and scarves and pillows. But what could I do with all those free swag tee shirts from 2014? Too bad I couldn't just use elements from each of the designs and make something new.

Or wait... maybe I could. I do have scissors and I do have fabric glue. Heck, I even own a sewing machine if I wanted to get serious.







So I sat down with the scissors and a bag of old shirts during the Olympics and started cutting out words from the front and back of 20 shirts.

It was a perfect task. Unlike most of my hobbies I could start and stop with no ill effects. I didn't lose my train of thought, the tee didn't dry, crack, sag or over-process in any way.

I enjoyed the parts of the Olympics I wanted and the holes in the tee shirts stayed just as they were and when I came back I just started cutting again.

What I thought would be a tedious task turned out to be a lot of fun. In fact, I think it helped me enjoy the Olympic events even more.

Nervous about whether your fave is going to make it into semi-finals - well cut apart some tee shirts.

Your favorite might be getting knocked off the podium - make the cuts extra ragged. Heck the more ragged and nervous looking the better, just makes it look really hand made.










Of course making the scraps into a work of art is another story. Once I realized that I could never color coordinate or match sizes or fonts - well then it became fun again and I had some flashbacks to my teen tears and rebellious designing. Shew, this adulting in design thing had messed with my sense of freedom and spontaneity.

So this was a good, I got a sense of fun back, made something fun from discarded clothes, and even found a bright-sided silvered-lining to the filed craft-knife experiments. This was a fun win.

Of course my short poem writing skills had also atrophied. But I listened to some music, realized the lyrics actually made no sense and if they could do it then I could do it, I composed three amaze-balls poems in just a few minutes. And I think I got back with my teen self here as well.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Shop through our Amazon links to help support this site.

Also find me on:

FACEBOOK -or- INSTRUCTABLES -or- YOUTUBE

Follow @tangoofthegeeks

Good Enough to Start With - Cut and Run

I got something right on the first try, then spent a full day trying and failing to make it better - only to realize it didn't really need to be improved. But like most dead ends, I learned a lot of useful stuff along the way.

Last week I posted about a 3d printed template for cutting, slashing and modifying fabric. The design was a success, both because it was easy to customize and print new designs with only a few minutes work for each pattern, and because it actually helped making clean straight cuts in tee-shirts.

Not satisfied, I continued to think of new ways to use this approach until I reached the limits of the first design. I wanted bigger better, smaller faster, simpler yet more complex designs. Are you beginning to suspect I might have gotten carried away?

Sure, the template worked. But I noticed that any design with the slots closer than about 10mm started to create problems. Common tee-shirt fabric, being all stretchy and flimsy, was particularly problematic. It would stretch, gather and distort when the cutting slots got too close together. This really sucked because slashing old tee-shirts was the original impetus behind the entire concept.

I also noticed that very thin or slippery fabrics like sateen, or very thick fabrics like denim didn't always work very well. If I was careful, I could do both. But I had to take care to hold the template just right and position and lay out the fabric correctly.

A simple, first try success wasn't good enough. I had to make it better. I had a serious case of designer fever.

What I needed were some cleats or ridges and matching grooves to really clamp down on the cloth and hold it in place.

So I started a redesign of the entire template system. I spent half of a day thinking about it and drawing simple sketches. What if I put cleats or ridges on the surfaces, maybe add matching indentations to really clinch the cloth and keep it from moving.

I did several sketches like that. I got a feel for a way to draw the "features" easily. And then started thinking about how to automate the process so that I could type in a few numbers and the pattern would magically draw itself.

The first (successful) version simply extruded shapes up from the ground plane, the cut or joined the shapes to create two slotted plates. But this new cleated, wavy system wouldn't work like that. Now, I had to extrude on two or even three planes and somehow coordinate the origins and geometries across multiple drawing steps.

That was kind of annoying. I had to redo all my old work/ And, because I wasn't sure which, if any. of the new shapes would work, I  needed to find the simplest method of automating multiple styles of cleats and clips and waves.

I couldn't find any one style that worked for all shapes, so I wound up generating several different files with completely different automation strategies.

Getting a flat face to match with another flat face is easy. getting curved and notched faces to mate with other curved faces with varying distances between them, well that isn't nearly as easy. Especially if the surfaces curve in all directions at once.

Automating that process is even harder. Boy did I learn a lot.

Or what if I made the entire surface wavy - yeah, that would really lock them together.

I spent about a full day concepting then drawing and automating these new designs. I was getting closer, but also getting frustrated. Then I went back to look at the results from the first tests and realized something.

I didn't need to do all this.

Seriously, I'm never going to be cutting two hundred strips of cloth that are only 2mm wide. That's just ridiculous. Look at any example of slashed tee-shirt mods. They have a few (10-20) cuts and the strips are at least an inch wide, not a hundred tiny cuts.

This project was supposed to be about slapping down a template on a worn out tee and making 10 or 20 relatively straight cuts in a few seconds.

I had gotten carried away and was trying to create a process that would rival the precision of a laser cutter. Why do that?

So I stopped the design and tried to feel better about the day I had just lost to stupidity. It was probably the easiest part of the day. I did actually learn a lot, and any time you find new ways of doing things it's a win. If not today, then sometime soon.

There are parts that I can still use in this design. I can use some of the new ideas in other projects. I'm working on a metal and paper embosser where these techniques are useful. A lot of these ideas are also applicable for sliding joints for lids and cases. And this exploration helped me get a better grasp on basing multi-plane geometries off a single origin point.

So like most failures, I got a lot of useful information to use. So maybe that day wasn't a complete loss after all. Now I'm off to cut up more old shirts.

Also find me on: FACEBOOK 

Follow @tangoofthegeeks

SteamPunk Pendant with Round PCB

Made another Steampunk pendant necklace using upcycled parts scavenged from broken items around the house. This one uses a repurposed PCB. That's not very unusual in my projects, but this PCB is round with a hole in the center, which is very unusual.

The round PCB had a pretty green color, and I added some broken bling to it along with some scavenged bits from old jewelry and a faux gear from the craft store just to validate the Steampunk theme/ When it's all put together I think it works as a pendant quite well.

I don't remember where the board came from, maybe an old mouse or an old radio knob assembly. But I do remember having it sitting in the collection and taunting me for a long time until I finally decided to use it whether the project turned out nice or not.

See, I have a hard time using unusual parts because I'm always afraid I will fail and waste the one unique chance to ever use such a part. If it's a common, standard part then I'll take chances and use it quickly because I can always get another chance with another copy. But this is the first round PCB I had ever found and I waited and waited and waited.





Then inspiration struck, and after a year or more of hesitation, the entire piece came together in a matter of minutes - and I like it. I even found a way to decorate the back side so that it's at least not ugly or distracting if it spins around while being worn..

I even decorated the back of the pendant because necklaces tend to flip around when they are being worn. The back of the PCB was a dull brown, so I covered it with a large fake gear for the steampunk look and even added an oh-so-popular wing to complete the composition. It's not pretty enough for the featured front, but I think it's good enough for the hidden back.

But I waited a while to post it. I wanted to see if I still liked the final product after a few days, or maybe I was just so relieved to be rid of the teasing piece of electronic scrap that I had convinced myself it was attractive.

Well, it's been a few days and I still kind of like it so I decided to post it.

Unfortunately, in the same burst of creation, I also made a really ugly project from a unique part. I kept adding pieces and colors and sparkly things to that project hoping it would "come together" as a composition - and it remained ugly with every added part - at least to me.










I'll also give this failed project a few days and see if it grows on me. Or maybe I will decide that some people might actually like the large clunky thing. Or, I might just keep adding things to it until I can pretend that I had always intended for it to be one of those monstrous accretions you sometimes see in vintage stores.

Meanwhile. I'm working on another project that seems to be holding together as I add the parts. If I don't blow it, I might have a completely different style of PCB jewelry to share in a few days.

Also find me on: FACEBOOK 

Follow @tangoofthegeeks