Leather jewellery

Vegetable-tanned leather for tooling and shaped pieces, or soft leather cord for simple bracelets and necklaces. Veg-tan takes stamping, dyeing, and moulding well, which is what you want for cuffs and pendants. For wrap bracelets, pre-cut leather cord (1-2mm round) is the easiest start and comes in many colours. Buy small offcut bags first, sold cheaply by weight, rather than a whole hide you may not use.

Fewer than leatherwork generally suggests. For cord jewellery, just scissors, glue, and clasps. For cut-and-stamped pieces, add a sharp craft knife or rotary cutter, a cutting mat, a hole punch, and basic snaps or rivets. A starter rivet-and-snap kit is around €15. The expensive stamping and stitching tools come later, only if you move toward tooled cuffs and stitched designs.

Cord ends and crimps. Slide a cord-end cap over the cut end, crimp it shut with pliers, then attach a jump ring and clasp to the loop on the cap. For flat leather, fold the end over a bar clasp and rivet or glue it. The common mistake is gluing a clasp straight to the leather, which peels off with wear. A crimped cord-end holds far better.

Yes, on veg-tanned leather specifically. Chrome-tanned leather (most soft commercial leather) resists dye, but veg-tan absorbs it beautifully. Use a leather dye or even diluted acrylic, apply thin even coats with a sponge or cloth, and seal with a leather finish afterward to stop the colour rubbing off. Test on a scrap first, because leather drinks dye unevenly and the final shade is always darker than it looks when wet.