Leather Fortune Cookies! A Full Batch Of A Dozen, Fresh Out Of The Oven! Stuffed With Mildly Perplexing

Leather fortune cookies! A full batch of a dozen, fresh out of the oven! Stuffed with mildly perplexing pieces of paper!

I cut these when I’ve got a scrap of leather left from another project that’s too small to fit anything else on, and I’ll tend to dye them when I’ve got extra dye that I got out but didn’t need all of.

I’ve had them up on my Etsy store as singles for a while, finally put up a listing for a dozen.

Scale dragon tail in red with a black underbelly. My friend with Very Good Wiggles is showing off how flexible these are and how fluidly they move.

The scales are anodized aluminum, linked together by stainless steel rings. This one measures in at 36 inches from the tail tip to the top of the belt, and weighs 3 pounds 1 ounce. It’s got a lobster clasp at the tip to attach little things onto.

Sometimes you just gotta make something simple as a material test.

Threw together this collar because I’ve been dissatisfied with my strap work. Needed to do a bit of practice and figuring out on making the edges a bit nicer.

Normally I’m happy to just leave the laser-cut edges on things I make. I try to put the hard work into the design, and keep the labor to a minimum. After all, there are plenty of other leather crafters who’re better than I’ll ever be at doing things like highly polished collars and straps. But as I’ve been doing more designs that require buckled connections, it’d be good to get more confident in the hand-made strap department.

I am opening for dragon tail commissions! I'm looking to make 3 during May, possibly more into June. Info here: https://armoreddragon.tumblr.com/tails

A new dragon tail made in anodized titanium and blackened stainless steel. It uses teal, purple and violet titanium, in a pattern that gives an image of larger scales overlapping down its length. It’s got a full line of metal spikes along the spine, and a lobster clasp at the tip to attach things onto.

The anodized titanium is a rare treat to work with. It’s expensive and I need to custom-order it from the manufacturer and I’m always low-key worried they’ll tell me to go away one of these times, but damn if it isn’t just stunningly beautiful when it’s good. I really love the variation and texture on every scale, and I like putting together patterns to mix the colors in with each other and try to enhance that effect. In this batch the teal scales shifted on the edge of sea green and blue with hints of purple, the purple was a more muted maroon-ish tone with a blue base, and the violet was a great vibrant tone with occasional shifts towards rose-gold. The colors aren’t quite iridescent, but they definitely look like they were pulled out of the swirling colors of a soap bubble and pumped up to full saturation.

The blackened stainless steel is fun too. I guess I just really enjoy coloring processes that don’t rely on dyes like anodized aluminum does.

This tail is a medium length, measuring in at 31 inches from the tip to the top of the belt line, and it weighs 3 pounds 11 ounces.

Flame filigree mask! Finally some decent photos of it!

This design gets a gradient/fade from yellow around the eyes to red at the tips. There's always some variation in that process, this particular one came out more on the red side.

Here it is on my Etsy store.