Thrifting Thursday 7-25-13 Leather Belts

Hello Friends~



Today's "Thrifting Thursday" is a quick peek into my use of the leather from re-purposed belts. Recently, I have been making cool pendants from vintage and re-cycled belt buckles, like you see on the right.
 
I really like the way a functional item becomes an art piece, but being a 'thrifty' girl I hated to waste the leather that was left.

I use these awesome metal shears to easily cut through the leather
[available here > http://www.bsueboutiques.com/shop/index.php?keywords=shears

This buckle will be set aside for a future pendant, but the leather is very nice with a tooled designs and in very good condition.  So let's put it to use.



Some of my first attempts with belt leather involved just using the loop that is already part of the belt. I wire wrapped a cool broken brooch that I found on a thrifting adventure and voila' ~ a bracelet.

Lately, I have been experimenting with embossing and etching on copper sheet metal and I thought this would transfer well to the belt leather bracelet idea. I decided that I needed to add a more secure clasping mechanism and purchased a snap kit at my local big box hobby store. It's quite easy to do.

 As with most of my projects, I love to fiddle, experiment and tweak as the ideas flow.
I expect this will take on more incarnations as I continue to work with these pieces.
THANKS for stopping by today. I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this topic.
Have a great weekend!
Warm Regards,
Tammie