Leather cord is probably one of the most widely used materials when it comes to making crafts like necklaces, bracelets, laces etc. Part of what makes leather cord so popular is the fact that you don’t necessarily have to buy it from a store because you can easily get it from leftover leather from previous projects or even old leather items that have reached their sell-by date.
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How to Make Leather Cord-
Making leather cord is actually quite easy and all you need is some tooling leather, a craft knife with a sharp blade, some leather dye, a T-square (of course) and even a self-healing mat in most instances.
Before we proceed, let us address the elephant in the room. We know some of you are wondering what the self-healing mat is for, right? Well, that’s to protect the surface that you’ll be working from since you’ll be using a very sharp blade.
Moving on, the T-square will make sure that you’re able to cut a straight cord that looks neat and practical enough to use on any of your upcoming leather craft projects. However, if you’re working with a nice and smooth piece of leather that has already been cut into straight angles, then there won’t be a need for the T-square because half the work will have been done for you.
Once the leather cord has been cut out from the leather material in a nice straight line, the next step is usually to trim the edges with a sharp pair of scissors so that you can get an immaculate, straight cord to work with.
Lastly, the leather cord is usually dyed using the preferred color, although to be honest most people just go with the usual brown or black because they’re versatile hues that go with anything.
It’s important to note though that you can’t just use any type of dye on leather, hence there’s a special type of leather dye available that’s specifically made to add color to the genuine leather material. Also, if you’re making your own leather cord at home,make sure you follow the instructions provided on the leather dye packaging. They’re usually very concise but simple enough for anyone to understand, and they’ll let you know how much dye to use and for how long you should leave it on.
The process of making leather cord is usually complete when the leather dye has dried up, which means the cord can now be used to make anything you want.
What Kind of Animal Skin is Used?
As mentioned above, leather cord is typically made from an existing piece of leather. So the type of animal skin that the leather cord is made from depends on the type of animal skin that was used to make the piece of leather that it was cut from in the first place. Now, leather is usually made from cowhide but it can also be manufactured from the skin of the sheep in the case of lambskin leather, as well as goat and buffalo.
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