Diy leather paintings for beginners

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

In every house there is sure to be an old leather bag, jacket, purse or trousers. It can be a pity to throw it away, because natural material is expensive, but it is quite possible to give it a second life. Some use leather strips to create brooches, bracelets, earrings, or sew cases for tablets and e-books.

Genuine leather is considered a very supple and comfortable material for needlework. Products are durable and effective.

If you have a creative nature and skillful hands, you can create beautiful leather paintings with your own hands. Wall panels can be made both flat, by the type of application, and voluminous or embossed. As additional means of implementing ideas, the master can use pieces of natural fur, thin leather laces, ribbons and a dense base for attaching crafts. Paintings decorated in carved wooden frames will look beautiful.

Bthe article tells how to make leather paintings with your own hands, what material is needed for this, describes step by step to novice craftsmen how to work with leather, what tools you need to have. The manufacturing technology of such panels requires the necessary knowledge and skills. You can start with simple flat paintings using multi-colored leather ribbons.

What you need to have to work with leather

1. Genuine leather. You can pick up multi-colored patches, but the material also dyes well.
2. To create three-dimensional elements you will need PVA glue.
3. To connect leather parts to each other, they take stronger glue, for example, superglue "Moment" or "Crystal". It must be transparent so as not to leave stains on the surface of the parts. A glue gun will work too.
4. You can dye strips or patches as a universal dye for fabrics and leather, as well as acrylic paints and aerosols.
5. Thin or floral wire to give volume to the elements of the picture from the skin. With your own hands, you can make an ornament or a mosaic with it.
6. Scissors or a sharp utility knife.
7. Pencil and cardboard for templates.
8. Bowl of water.
9. Construction hair dryer.
10. Tools for forming curved parts - metal balls, sticks or a fluting cutter.

Getting Started

Before you make a picture of leather with your own hands, you need to decide on the image. For beginners, you can try to make a small flower with leaves around the bud, placing the picture insmall photo frame. Think of a basis for the image. It can be thick cardboard, fiberboard or thin plywood. Be sure to treat the surface with paint, cover with fabric or make a background of leather.

Also, to make a flower, you will need templates so that all the petals are the same size. For this, thick cardboard and a simple pencil are useful. It is recommended to start making a leather painting with your own hands by making a light but spectacular flower.

Beginner Pattern

To make such an element for a panel, two identical long strips of leather are folded in half. The folded edge is cut into thin “noodles”, but not completely, so that the part does not break. Leave 0.5 cm for gluing the strip. Then the blanks are twisted into a circle and the edges of the strips are connected with hot glue. The same manipulation is performed with the second strip of skin. When both parts are dry, they are combined by laying on top of each other. Thus, the flower will turn out more voluminous.

The middle, which has a small hole, needs to be beautifully designed. For this, a thin leather cord in a contrasting color is best suited. It is wound around the beginning in a spiral and attached to the adhesive base in the center of the flower. It remains only to make the same carved leaves according to the template and attach crafts from below. To create a do-it-yourself leather painting (flower photo above in the article), you can make three or five of these colors and place them over the entire surface of the plywood base. The finished look of the panel will be received after being framed in a wooden frame.

How to make twisted and fluted petals

To make a flower consisting of individual petals, you need to draw a template on cardboard and circle it with a gel pen on the back of the material. Then, with sharp scissors, cut out the elements in the right amount. To prevent suede fringe from peeking out at the edges, they need to be scorched with a candle or a lighter.

A flower will look beautiful, in which the petals will be slightly twisted up. How to make such elements for a leather painting with your own hands (photo below), read on.

To keep the corrugation voluminous, you need to steam or soak in a bowl of water before working with a metal tool with a ball at the end of the part. Then, pushing well and drawing stripes from the center point to the edges, make furrows. To dry the parts, you can simply set them aside until morning in a warm place. If you need to quickly dry the petals, use a powerful building hair dryer.

Making a rose

It is interesting to make a picture/panel of leather with your own hands from roses. To twist each flower, cut up to 12 identical elements. Detailed production can be seen well in the photo below.

To make the petals neat and slightly wrapped in the middle, you need to singe them one by one with a candle or a lighter. Work begins by twisting the central element. It rolls tightly into a tube. For gluing the bottomit is smeared with either thick PVA glue or hot glue using a glue gun. Each next detail wraps around the previous one. The top edge curves outward to make the rose petals look as natural as possible. The petals are located with a shift around the center, then they will open evenly in all directions. If the bottom is uneven, no big deal. It is very easy to align with scissors.

On the base of the picture from pieces of leather, first the leaves are attached with their own hands, and only then the flower itself. Elements curved or with corrugated edges will look beautiful. You already know how to make them.

Lilies with veins in the middle

In the picture below, you need to make original lily petals from ribbons and leather with your own hands. As you can see in the photo, there is a thin vein in the center of each element. Let's focus on how to achieve this performance.

The petals are cut out with scissors according to the pattern. According to the previously known scheme, we singe the edges so that the suede fringe is not visible. In the center of the part, from the sharp upper corner down, a strip is drawn with glue and a thin wire is applied on top of it. Then with hands on both sides the skin is crushed around. You will have to hold the part tightly for some time until the glue grabs. Light folds will look interesting at the bottom of each petal. If such decorative elements are planned, then before the wire for the vein is formed, it is necessary to soak or steam the part cut according to the template, andcrush with your hands in the right places. After complete drying, start working with wire.

Flower coloring

To get a beautiful flower, the lily needs to be painted. Aerosol paints are used to effectively complete the task. First, the skin is sprayed with white color completely, then only the middle is painted with yellow paint. The very edges of the skin can be darkened with brown, having previously applied it to a cotton swab. Small dots are made on the petals with its end part. You can take a toothpick for such delicate work.

Draped flower

You can make a picture of leather and fur with your own hands using the drapery method. To do this, a pattern of a single flower with six or seven petals is drawn. Then you need to soak the workpiece well in a bowl of warm water and mash it with your hands so that excess air comes out. Then the skin is removed from the container and laid out on the table. Fingers create creases in the material in the right places, pressing it firmly on both sides. When dry, the shape of the part will remain crumpled. The photo in the article shows that ordinary pins with a ring at the end are used to fix the material.

Draperies can also be made on a large piece of leather to cover the background of the base of the picture from ribbons and leather. With their own hands they crush the wet material, squeezing it with stripes, stars or rays. A flower from several blanks will look beautiful. The middle is filled with strips, one edge of which is cut with "noodles".

Artificial leather painting

With their own hands, masters make paintings notonly from natural material, crafts and leatherette look great. Consider a flat picture depicting chanterelles. You can make any character this way. First, draw a figure on a sheet of cardboard. In the absence of artistic abilities, finding a suitable image is easy on the Internet. The printed sheet is divided into separate uneven strips and the elements are colored with colored pencils. So you will immediately see what will happen as a result of the application.

Then all parts are cut with scissors. Take a look at the picture shown. It can be seen that all joints of the parts have a rounded shape. The only difficulty in making such a panel is the processing of the edges of the skin. To make them smooth, without sharp edges, add 0.5 mm on each side when cutting out the elements. Then all the details along the edge are smeared with PVA glue or "Crystal" and bent inward. Therefore, at the edges, all the details are rounded. After drying, you can already assemble a picture from them. It looks original, resembles a mosaic.

Embossed leather

Pictures from a single piece of leather look spectacular if patterns or objects are embossed on them. To work, you will need a wire, a bowl of warm water, any desired item. It can be scissors or a gun, a toy bug or a simple fork.

First, the material must be soaked well, holding in a bowl. Then lay it out on the surface of the table on the selectedvoluminous object and press down with force so that the skin “embraces” it from all sides. It's okay if small "wrinkles" appear around. Perform stroking movements with fingers and the whole hand. Use a hair dryer to keep the shape. If you do not have such an opportunity, then press down the object tightly by placing a bag of sand on top. It is better to do this work at night. In 12 hours, the skin will dry out, and the embossing will remain for a long time. The photo in the article shows how beautifully the big beetle turned out. After drying, the skin needs to be painted, highlighting the embossing with a different color.

Wire ornament

Another painting technique uses wire as an additional material. First, the desired patterns or ornament are twisted from it. Then a sheet of genuine leather is soaked in warm water and laid out on top of the wire. Then smooth the material with your hands. After the embossing is clearly manifested, the skin is dried, or covered with oppression.

The article discusses how to make leather paintings with your own hands for beginners. The described techniques for making colors and methods for working with the material will help you quickly complete the task. Happy creative ideas!