Leather Craft Workshop – TN Customisation

Went for a leather craft workshop last Saturday, held at the Cityluxe workroom. The workshop conducted by Maketh Project Singapore (I’m the lady with the blue jeans and olive standard TN in the reel) had only 2 pax that day, and it was fun & relaxing to chat about leathercraft, uses of traveler’s notebooks and art classes in general. Not just about the adult classes we’ve been attending, but also those compulsory school lessons where we suffered at the hands of fierce teachers decades ago!!!

The S$98 workshop included 3 pieces of leather: two to make a 3-slot card holder & folder for the front cover of a TN, and one for a folder with card slot on the back cover. I chose different colours for my inner front cover – a light brown on top of a dark green – for my Olive Standard TN, with light grey waxed thread for even more contrast.

I was fine with the marking with silver ink pen and cutting with penknife, but I didn’t realise there would be so much hammering involved in leather crafting! I was so afraid I would hit my fingers by accident again! (nightmare from several years ago when I tried metal stamping)

Thus I was rather slow at the hole-punching stage, requiring 4~5 hits per fork position! Fortunately I was able to make up for lost time at the sewing stage. The double needle method (along the edges) makes the saddle stitching looks so much neater compared to the usual single needle stitching marking the card slots. But I guess such imperfections show that it’s handmade personally!

The teacher kindly helped us with the fine details, such as trimming the edges to fit the curves of the TN cover, and cutting the horizontal card slot in the leather for the back cover.

As I had stuck a Traveler’s Notebook Pocket Sticker on my Olive standard back cover and did not want to replace it as yet, I decided to use the last piece of leather on my passport size brown TN instead. I chose to use brown thread on the thick brown leather, so that the colours would match the TN cover.

The teacher did not have a ready made template for the passport size TN, so we measured and adjusted on the spot. I chose to have a large pocket so that it can still fit in a proper card slot, but this means the leather would cover the elastic knot. Not sure how badly the leather in that area would change colour & shape over time……hopefully I won’t regret this!

We also had the option to add words to the leather (before sewing it on) via stamping. I was hesitant to do it, but the teacher gave tips on how to sight and hold the alphabet stamps, so I attempted my initials with 2 light whacks of the hammer.

The workshop totally overran and we took more than 3 hours to complete! To round things off, the teacher rub Columbus Mink Oil on our TN covers and the newly added leather folders. Love the look after the conditioning!!

Participants to the workshop get a $10 voucher to use on top of 10% discount off purchases in Cityluxe that day, so naturally I stayed for another 20 min after the workshop ended to pick up more washi tape and stickers. Looking forward to more of such workshops in future!