Perhaps it's best to start with an apology to those animals who've given their skins or hides to be ruined by an amateur, but we all have to start somewhere. In the past 2-3 months, I've spent most of my few, precious evening hours on learning how to make wallets and watch straps. It's quite unbelievable how many times a person can make the same mistake over and over again. A personal favourite of mine is gluing pieces together before finishing the top edges on a wallet. Another great one is using a manual creaser completely vertically, and so ensuring several slips and ruined edges along the way. I've finished all of the pieces linked below before starting to watch Phil's video courses, and have therefore already learned a great number of tricks on how to improve. I've also finally spend the time to figure out how to cast when stitching, so it can only get better from here, one hopes. I have the most trouble with keeping my stitch line straight, any kind of edge work (especially paint, which I've only tried with one of the wallets), not scratching of scuffing the leather (which is why I prefer leathers with some sort of texture - easier to hide mistakes), straight final cuts to enable better quality edge work, and perhaps most importantly of all, being patient and not rushing. One of the most frustrating things for me so far is the lack of splitting services in EU-based shops. I've used tatraleather.com and beltsproduction.com, and have been relatively happy with both, but would love to have more options in terms of leather thickness. It's quite hard to find a large and varied selection of <1mm leather in Europe. I've not taken photos of any of my finished pieces before they were used (and I'm generally not very careful with my belongings in terms of protecting them from scratches, etc.), so you can already see signs of use. The photos are large, so uploaded them on Imgur: The magic of the Internet Happy to receive any feedback and advice, and enthusiastically looking forward to getting better and enjoying a new hobby I'm passionate about. :)

My name is Jussi and I've started the hobby in December, after binging on Youtube videos on leathercraft. I've always enjoyed watching woodworking videos, but didn't really want to start that due to the cost and requirements for large machinery and a lot of space, etc. However, somehow I ended up watching leathercraft videos instead of woodworking and here we are. I've no plans to make leathercraft anything beyond a hobby, but it's such a nice contrast to my stressful day job, that it's been very helpful in calming down and just being there in the moment, working on a wallet or a watch strap. The best part is that I can do it at home, with relatively small amount of noise and mess - the perfect hobby for a parent. :D I'll be posting some of the projects sooner or later to get some help with problem areas. Thanks for reading and looking forward to joining the community!