I wasn’t totaly happy with the turtle from my last post. With all of the detail of the leather shell, the simply stitched head and feet just looked wrong. Wasn’t sure how to go about fixing it and then I remembered I had some extremely soft beige leather, but it was the wrong color. How do I go about altering the color without changing the hand of the leather? Oil pastels? Maybe. Then I remembered the clearanced sample pack of Shiva Paintsticks that I snagged ridiculously cheap. Please let there be a suitable green in the package. Sure enough there was a celadon color in the pack so I cut a small piece off of the leather to test. First I applied color from the paintstick and rubbed it into the leather with my finger. Then removed the excess using a scrap of cotton cloth. Voila! The perfect shade to use for turtle skin.
The picture below shows the original color of the leather with a scrap from the paintstick tinted piece on top.
The leather is really soft and flexible which is what made it perfect for cutting such small pieces for the head, feet and tail (the feet are only about ¼” wide), but the flexibility is also what made it so frustrating to stitch. Using the tiniest, sharpest needle I own and one strand of floss, the stitches going down through the leather from the top weren’t too bad, but coming up from the bottom the leather wanted to stretch without the needle piercing it. After a lot of cursing and perseverance all of the turtle’s extremities were attached.
There is a noticeable improvement in the turtles’s looks and I’m happy now with how he turned out. His eyes are a little large but they were the smallest seed beads I had, that weren’t black.
Oh and I’ve decided that the name of this piece is “A Crazy World”.
