One of the classes that I recently finished with Tony was on making custom dog collars. As a dog-lover and previous dog-owner I love being able to accessorize them (I never made mine wear an argyle sweater, though) and make sure they’re comfy and safe at the same time. A rugged handmade dog collar from thick leather would be perfect!
We all got to cut our own strips and Tony schooled us on proper measurements and hardware as well as a few other tricks. He also gave us a neat little table reference that had recommended collar sizes by dog breed. We cut our strips just shy of 1″ to be sure that our 1″ buckle, D-rings and strap keepers would fit and then we moved on to skiving the folded end and punching the buckle holes. I think I’ve learned that setting up the leather for a specific project is more entertaining than actually adding the design itself or color. After all this work, that’s the easy part!
We were allowed to pick from a variety of accents for our collars from studs and crystals to letter stamps for spelling out pup names. If you remember . . . I’m not one for the ‘mainstream’ type work so I walked out of class with what I assured everyone really was a dog collar. They didn’t believe me though. But I’m in love with it and had a blast creating it!
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