I recently started doing more leather work that is being added to my mix of other techniques I have used. I started doing fused glass over 2 years ago and I am bringing it back into my designs and pieces because it's great to display at all the outdoor shows we are doing during the summer.
The hand tooled cuffs started out as tooling hide which I cut, tooled, dyed and sealed. I then made the brass component (including the image on the brass) that is sewn to the cuff, I added a plastic base color to add another dimension to the metal and under the piece of raised metal sits a awesome piece of glass I fused in my kiln. The glass was shaped into a circle and slightly bevelled so it sits tightly in the brass setting.
The necklaces of this series are done the same way except I fabricated a simple small 3 prong setting that hold the fused glass. I like to curl the top of the prongs that are visible on the top of the necklace to add an extra layer of interest to the top.
The over all time to make a cuff that looks like this is close to 15 hours (if I was only to do this one cuff at a time) with all the waiting time for the glass to cool in the kiln, heat setting the plastic color, cutting/shaping the glass, adding the image to the metal, shaping and finishing the metal, cutting/tooling/dying/dealing the leather and finally attaching the components all together. I wouldn't do one cuff at a time I try to as much as possible to keep the price down to something affordable.
My inspiration for these pieces came after I finished the video game Mass Effect 2. The fused glass looks like little galaxies and the items look a little sci-fi or cyberpunk.
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