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Use vegetable-tanned, light-colored top-grained leather for tooling leather. If you’re not sure what you have, test the leather’s ability to take a pattern by wetting a corner and making lines with different objects like the edge of a coin.

When working with a large piece of tooling leather, tape or glue something to the back to prevent the leather from stretching when you are working on it.

The first step involves cutting a design into the leather, followed by creating depressions with various tools that result in elements of the design presenting a raised surface.

Tooling leather is done before it is painted or dyed. If the leather becomes dry while you are working on it, moisten with a damp sponge. If you’re not able to complete your project in one sitting, store the leather in an appropriately-sized Ziploc bag and place it in the refrigerator.

Choosing and Tracing a Design

Choose a design and trace it onto tracing film or wax paper with a pencil. You can get tracing film in most hobby stores. Search the internet and leatherworking books for ideas on tooling leather.

Other sources include wood burning and stamp making catalogues, coloring books, seed catalogues (for floral designs) and magazines like National Geographic. Copy and paste this url into your borwser and check out this great site for tooling leather patterns: leathersecrets.com/craft/carving.html

Start with something simple if you are just beginning tooling leather, and work up to more complex designs as you gain experience. Paper palette, available at craft stores, consists of paper on one side and a sort of plastic film on the other side. It can be trimmed to fit in your printer.

Once you find the design on the internet, simply print it off. The plastic side will protect the design from getting wet when you place it on the damp leather.

Transferring the Pattern

Begin by dampening the leather on both sides with a sponge, or by holding the piece under running water or dipping it in water. Try to avoid soaking the leather, as it becomes too soft to work with. Then place the tracing film on the right side of the leather, using tape at the back of the leather to hold it in place.

Using the tip of a ballpoint pen from which the ink cartridge has been removed, trace over the pattern, following the lines, pressing firmly. Instead of a ballpoint pen, you can purchase a special tool called a ballpoint stylus that is specially designed to transfer patterns for tooling leather. Once you remove the film, you can see the design on the leather’s surface. If you’ve made any mistakes, you can smooth them out using the back of a spoon.

Using a Swivel Knife

Taking a swivel knife, trace over the outline, holding the knife with your index finger resting on the u-shaped section at the top of the handle, while holding the body of the knife between your thumb and your middle finger. The knife should be turned by rotating the body between your thumb and the middle and ring fingers.

The knife is held upright at a 90 degree angle to the leather, cutting with the corner of the knife facing you. Don’t do multiple cuts over the line and make the cut light enough to just penetrate the grain, about half the thickness of the hide.

Creating Texture and Depressions

Use a firm surface such as marble for the next phase, where texture and depressions are created in the leather using a wooden, PVC or rawhide mallet, a beveller, a pear shader and a camouflage tool.

Bevellers come in different sizes. Start with three: a small, medium and pointy one. This will give you plenty of versatility when tooling leather.

Position the deep part of the beveller into the groove you have made, and the shallow part towards the side you want to push down or depress. Strike the beveller with the mallet. Use the beveller on the outside of the design to create the formation of ridges while giving a raised appearance.

By overlapping each stamping, you achieve a smooth and continuous effect. The pear shader is used to depress areas of the design, adding contour and depth. The camouflage tool works to add texture to the design and is excellent for such fine work as recreating the petals of a flower.

Get comfortable with your tools by practicing on scrap pieces of tooling leather. That way you’re less likely to make mistakes when you are working with the actual project.

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Healing through the Written Word - Writing is the medicine we need to heal our everyday wounds and provide us with the immunity to go forth and live, knowing we have a powerful healer at our fingertips.

Everyday wounds are those hurts that present themselves to us on a daily basis through our relationships and interactions with others and stay with us until they are addressed and eventually healed. Each day we are presented with situations that can develop into wounds or contribute to our growth as a Higher Ground Human. It all depends on what we choose.

“Everyday wounds” consist of the following:

* Fears we have not faced or embraced. * Hurt feelings that either are not recognized or addressed. * Blocks or obstructions that keep us from achieving our goals, evolving, or developing self esteem. * Lost dreams due to overwhelm. * Feelings of isolation. * Frustration * Negativity and judgments. * Unable to focus.

We can choose to walk in integrity taking us one step closer towards becoming a Higher Ground Human or as many of us do we can choose to take the safe route, hide our true feelings, protecting our vulnerability and safely hiding our fear.

When we choose the latter, we are being untrue to ourselves, the biggest sin of all. We are our own worst enemy. Once we realize and accept our hurtful behavior we are ready to step onto our healing path and begin the journey. To do otherwise would be deliberately unkind.

Writing is an untapped natural healer, which according to The Med Serv. Medical News, reporting on a study by Smyth & colleagues, concluded that “The simple act of writing about bad times can be potent, and a low cost, method of relieving pain and symptoms of chronic illnesses….

Healing our emotional wounds is necessary for us to move forward, to grow spiritually, to live peacefully and to Be the best we can be.

Walking in integrity means our thoughts; actions and feelings are all aligned, all in accordance all congruent (in agreement). Actively and consciously inhibiting and holding back our thoughts and feelings takes work AND can lead to stress, ultimately affecting our immune system often putting us at risk for major and minor diseases.

James W Pennebaker, PhD is his 1990 book; Opening Up showed a relationship between expressing our emotions through writing and the positive effect this type of writing has on our immune system.

Healing is learning to be true to ourselves. To be true to ourselves and to trust ourselves takes courage and a knowing of who we are. To become true to ourselves we must embrace our fears, walking through them to the other side. When we do this we open ourselves to trusting and experiencing life.

Knowing who we are is a life-long journey AND it takes willingness on our part to consciously take that first step.

I believe we are all aware of what happens when our emotions are left dangling with no where to go, or no release. They can manifest themselves into physical ailments, leaving us confused and often making visits to the doctor’s office.

Healing our everyday wounds is necessary for our mental health AND for personal growth.

Everyday wounds are painful and many of us choose to simply ignore or eliminate the pain by being in a constant state of denial.

For those who choose to travel through the pain, we find integrity and personal growth on the other side.

Writing is a powerful tool to have when moving through the pain. Through writing we can make sense out of confusion, giving meaning to emotional hurts, pin-pointing the root of our pain and sadness and opening us up to a whole new world.

Writing on a daily basis at the same time is a simple everyday ritual we must develop. When you have a conflict between your thoughts and your actions sit down and begin to write giving yourself a prompt. Your prompt may be “Why was I angry yesterday?” and just let the words flow through your fingers onto the paper. This free writing is powerful. You will know when you are finished.

Now give yourself the prompt “Why was I not truthful .?” and begin to write, letting the words flow out onto the paper.

Once you are finished sit quietly and read both writings. I promise, you will be exposed to the answers to both of your prompts, giving you the opportunity to make amends to yourself by bringing your actions and your thoughts in alignment. You will begin to walk your thoughts and your talk AND be yourself. There is nothing more powerful and a battle worth fighting.

The famous American poet, EE Cummings, said, “To be nobody-but-yourself—-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.”

This exercise will take only 30 minutes of your time, yet it is invaluable when it comes to your personal growth.

Writing helps us get in touch with what is hidden from us, giving us answers to those questions that seem to baffle us often exposing the reason behind our anger.

Writing gives us energy and frees us from the ties that bind. When we write we create a spiritual, truthful connection with ourselves and with others.

Give yourself the gift of writing.

Virginia Dever
Writer - Coach - Healer
www.choosingthepositive.com
email-virginia@choosingthepositive.com

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Adventure racers, Appalachian Trail hikers and ultramarathon trail runners have discovered the incredible usefulness-to-weight ratio of the littlest of the Leatherman Tools, the Micra and the Squirt.

And they’re not the only onesathletes and outdoor people of all types have come to rely on Leatherman tools to cope with all kinds of outdoor tasks both routine and emergency.

How do these Leatherman tools come in handy? Well, first, they’re very light weight, so they’re not a burden to carry. You can toss them in your backpack, clip them to your sports bottle carrier, or just put them in your pocket.

Adventure racers use the Micra Leatherman tool to:

• Remove splinters with the tweezer attachment
• Repair canoes and kayaks on the go with the 4 different screwdrivers attachments
• Cut open freeze-dried camping food with the scissors attachment
• Cut rope with the Leatherman knife
• Measure coordinates on maps with the built-in Leatherman ruler
• Open beer to celebrate after finishing, using the bottle opener attachment

Appalachian Trail hikers have even more uses for Leatherman tools. They’ve used the Squirt Leatherman tool to:

• Carve beautiful faces into deadfall woodthe Zytel

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