Leather Grimoire

Practicing my prop making skills with this leather journal commissioned for my sister’s friend. The creative brief was that she wanted a magic book looking grimoire with symbols from shows she likes (shadowhunters, harry potter, wine, creativity), the inside has her initials. Made the design and pattern in Adobe illustrator starting with some stock images I’ve purchased in the past, then used my glowforge to engrave and cut the pieces out of proofgrade medium weight leather. Dyed the leather black, conditioned it, sewed it together by hand & using my sewing machine (Jeans foot 8D and leather needle), and burnished the edges. Lastly added some filigree and swarovski crystals. Honestly if I realized my sewing machine could handle leather I would not have cut all those holes in it and would have saved so much time not hand sewing :p. It’s on its way to Australia now!

engraving on the glowforge (since I’m making it black, could have probably peeled the paper off ahead of time and saved myself hours)

Raster vs. Vector engraving (Raster sucks and looks so bad)

All the pieces ready to be dyed!

everything dyed and conditioned

everything sewed together, filigree painted gold and attached.

playing around with if I should attach a key… too much maybe

Monogram on the inside with a test notebook in place.

Burnished the edges for a nice smooth finish

I post my cosplay and glowforge stuff on my instagram @chelkacraft