Kanzashi in Leather

As promised, more fun with Kanzashi flowers thanks to Diane Gileland’s book Kanzashi in Bloom!Do you remember I mentioned that you could find great leather crafting pieces from ugly-but-salvageable purses? For my flowers in this post, I used purse leather as well as some faux black leather auto upholstery fabric that is quite thin and super easy to work with, (and looks & feels very real.) I found it @40% off in the decorator fabric section of the fabric store.The purse leather was a bit tricky to work with because it’s naturally thicker, but still manageable. You can’t get too small with leather flowers, my petals started as 3″ squares.
I began my flowers by printing graphics onto an inkjet fabric sheet sized to use on metal button cover hardware. You might recognize two of the designs as modified graphics from The Graphics Fairy, thanks Karen!It’s good to print the images on paper first, cut out and wrap the buttons to make sure the graphics line up to the size button you’re using. Once the size is confirmed, tear off the paper and wrap with the fabric graphics.I wrapped my buttons and snapped on the backs.I coated the fabric buttons with Fabric Mod Podge from my friend Amy. I love the satin sheen it created!For the leather petals, I followed the instructions in Diane’s book for the vinyl Kanzashi flowers. I used plastic clothespins to keep the petals together while the super-glue dried..I made the faux leather brooch by following the basic instructions for fabric and embellished it with my monogram button center.For the brown leather flower, I went digging for a centerpiece and found that a vintage glass knob works great. I threaded the screw through the knob, a round of leather and a hardware backplate.I glued the flowers around the knob with E6000 and onto the leather round, secured with a trusty produce band and set into a little jelly jar to dry.Once dry, I removed the nut, threaded the screw through the front of my old wicker picnic basket and screwed the nut back on. It created the perfect finial.Stepping away from the Kanzashi concept a bit, I cut the red leather into petal shapes and threaded them and gathered them into a rose configuration.I finished it off with another graphic button center to create a brooch for my denim jacket.Next week I will be featuring YOUR Kanzashi assignment projects, so get ’er done and email me the results!