D.I.Y. Flower Brooch from Leather

Last Thursday I was hosted at the home-studio of leather accessory designer Ruzanna Musakhanyan. During our meeting she introduced me to her beautiful collection of leather accessories and, specially for StyleBlog’N, she revealed her  technique of making this beautiful leather brooch.

For this project you will need:

• piece of soft leather
• beads (preferably wooden beads, since plastic ones may look too shiny) 
• regular glue
• glue for leather items
• scissors
• small knife
• lighter
• thick sheet of paper
• pen

           THE FLOWER

Step 1: Draw and cut 5 flowers of different sizes (from big to small) from a thick paper.
Step 2: Place the paper flower on a piece of leather and draw around it with a pen.
Step 3: Cut the flower shape from the leather following the lines. Repeat Steps 2,3 for all five pieces.
Step 4: Place the leather flowers in an emulsion made from regular glue + water (1:3). Leave them in for a couple of minutes. The leather will get very soft afterwards.
Step 5: Take out the leather flowers from the emulsion, wrap each flower leaf around itself (repeat it for all 5 flowers) and leave to dry for about 5-6 hours (make sure they are not completely dry, so you can unfold them later).
Step 6: Unfold the flower leafs of all 5 flowers.
Step 7: Glue the flowers (starting from big to small) on each other using special glue for leather.

THE LEAVES

For this flower we made 3 leaves.

Step 1: Draw and cut a leaf from a thick sheet of paper .
Step 2: Place the paper leaf on a piece of leather and draw around it with a pen.
Step 3: Cut the leaf shape from the leather following the lines. Repeat Steps 2,3 two more times.
Step 4: Warm up the knife using a gas stove.
Step 5: With the hot knife draw the  leaf “nerves” on a leather leaf.
Step 6: Round the sharp sides of the leaf with a lighter.
Step 7: Make a small cut on the bottom of the leaf and glue the two sides on each other. This will round up the leaf.
Step 8: Apply the glue for leather on the bottom of the leaf and glue it on the bottom of the flower. Attach the other 2 leaves in a similar way.
Step 9: Apply some glue for the leather on the bottom of the flower and attach the pin.
Step 10: Apply some glue for the leather in the middle of the flower and add the wooden beads.

That’s it! Your leather flower brooch is ready!!!!

In the end, on behalf of all of us, I would like to thank Ruzanna for this interesting project!
In my next post I will share with you beautiful leather accessory collection by Ruzanna.
Stay in touch!