Leather Cuffs & Keychains

I’m back using more of my leather swatches (thrift store find!) You can usually find leather furniture swatches/samples on ebay and most craft stores carry small leather craft pieces.

Similar to my leather photo wallet project, these pieces were pretty easy to make with a T-shirt transfer sheet for DARK fabric and more great graphics from The Graphics Fairy. I also designed a couple with art from my blog & Etsy store banners.

Using The Graphics Fairy images, I created a narrow collage measured to fit the size crimp bars I’ll be using, which are 3/4″ wide. I also made a repeat pattern from a pretty frame image she had on her site. You can grab the art from here and reduce or trim to size. You may also notice that when I print on the transfer sheets, I usually fill up the whole sheet with art & images that I can always use later. I hate to waste any space on these sheets, especially if there’s not enough left over to feed back through the printer. I made a few images for patches I’ll sew to something one day.

{CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO ENLARGE FOR DETAIL}


[1]-[2] I printed out my graphics onto the transfer sheet and trimmed out each design.

[3]-[4] Following the directions for the transfer sheets, I peeled off the backing of each piece and ironed onto the smooth surface of the leather.

[5] You can see what happens if you move your iron when pressing instead of holding it in place. But this little mishap was fixable, you’ll see. [6] Once all my images were transferred to leather I cut out the strips, leaving some extra space around the edges.

[7] I stitched along the strips and [8]-[9] trimmed out each to size.

[10] The stars of this project are the crimp bars. For this post I wanted to link to my original supplier, but found that they are out of stock. So by googling, I located more: LINK.

[11]-[12] I placed the crimp bar on the ends of the strips and covered with a scrap piece of leather before crimping with my pliers to avoid scuffing the metal. The cuffs have teeth that sink into the leather and grip well.

[13] I punched starter holes into the repeat frame strip and then [14] pressed in metal eyelets.

[15]-[16] To complete the bracelet cuffs, I added jump-rings and clasps to the crimp bars and on my blog cuff, also attached some beads

For the keychains, I simply hooked the openings of the crimp bars onto a metal key ring. The keychains are perfect for looping over a hook and have less chance of getting lost in my purse!