How To Make A Leather Cuff Bracelet

How To Make A Leather Cuff Bracelet: Create an amazing bracelet yourself, tutorial for adding snaps, gold leaf detail, and a tassel.

Today I’m sharing this great DIY Leather Cuff Bracelet.  After a little experimenting, I’m thrilled with how it turned out.

If you’ve been following along lately, you’ll know I’ve joined with some other bloggers for the #12MonthsofDIY challenge.  For the challenge we take a different item each month and come up with a DIY.  It’s so much fun to see what everyone does with the same material and all the great, creative ideas.  A few months ago our item was a thrift store find and sisters Jane and Sonja from  Sustain My Craft Habit used an old leather coat to a create a great bag.  Ever since then, I’ve been thinking I’d like to try working with leather myself.

Materials:

• leather
• sharp scissors
• disappearing ink marker
• snaps
• leather hole punch
• gold leaf adhesive
• gold leaf
• tassel charm

How To Make a Leather Cuff Bracelet:

The leather I used is from Leather Hide Store, they have an amazing leather selection.  The colours of the leather were Sea Glass and Sea Mist for this project.  I learned a few things along the way and ended up making a couple, so here’s how I made them, along with a few tricks and tips. 🙂

Start by cutting out a 4 inch wide strip to fit my wrist.  I used a disappearing marker to mark everything, which works out great and doesn’t leave any marks on the finished project.  Just cut out with sharp scissors, and try to slightly round the corners.

Next step is to punch out the holes for your snap closure.  I marked mine at 1 cm in from each side.  I used a leather punch from the craft store, which worked great.  On my first attempt I tried using the fabric punch that comes with the snaps, but it really didn’t work well, so it’s worth getting the leather punch.

I picked up my snaps at the fabric store.  The kit comes with all the pieces you need to attach them.  Follow the directions on the package, you’ll need a hammer, but it’s pretty easy.  On my first attempt though, I had the metal piece that you use underneath upside down.  The indent was a bit too small for the snap, and marked it.  On my second attempt I used the other side and it worked perfectly, so be careful to follow the directions really carefully.

I wanted to add a fun tassel to my bracelet, so I picked one up in the jewellery making section of the craft store.  To add it, I punched a small hole, close enough to the edge of the leather so that the tassel would still hang nicely.  Then I used needle nose pillars to attach it.   Then…I removed it to do the gold leaf, so the second time around I did this step after the gold leaf.

To add the gold leaf chevrons to the leather, I used special gold leaf adhesive you can find at the craft store, and imitation gold leaf.  I created my pattern with washi tape -taking care to make them as even as possible.  Then, I applied the adhesive with a small paint brush, waited 10 min, for it to get tacky, and applied the gold leaf.  Lastly, I removed the washi tape.  On my first bracelet, I worked on the tape placement the night before, and the next day finished the bracelet up with the gold leaf.  When I removed the tape, it damaged the leather.  I think it was only because it had been on over night and really stuck.  On my second attempt I had no problems.

Lastly I added the tassel back on.

I really, really like how it turned out, and it makes me want to keep experimenting with leather.

Perhaps I’ll try some different colours next, or mixing gold leaf and copper leaf?  The possibilities are endless.

With a DIY Leather Cuff Bracelet, life really is a party!