What goes into flower carving, or basket stamping leather?   Originally written October of 2007. This is a photo illustrated step by step process of how I flower carve and basket stamp the belt tops on the custom chinks. I'm by no means an expert and there are several different ways/techniques to acheive the finished product. In fact I'm constantly improving, changing & learning new techniques.  I published this to simply give you (the customers) a little insight on how this is actually done. Carlos   Several People have visited my shop over the past couple of years and they seem to be amazed at the small tools a leather crafter uses when carving a floral pattern in leather or basket stamping a belt top. When we as leather crafters say it’s “hand made” or “hand tooled”, we mean just that. We are selling our time, I don’t have a machine in the shop somewhere that stamps each and every one of these out with a single click of a button. It’s an often slow and tedious process that in the end rewards with beautiful results. What goes into flower carving leather? Here’s a simple pattern I use on my chink belt tops which features basket stamping with corner flower carving. I will document each step in progression from start to finish.

Step 1: Belt Top Pattern, Cut and Cased (Dampened) for tooling/stamping

Step 2: Boarders laid out and front belt slots bunched out.

Step 3: Boarder cutting with a swivel knife.

Step 4: Beaded boarders completed with beader blade on a swivel knife.

Step 5: Beaded boarders finished off with a seeder stamp.

Step 6: Trace and transfer design layout to leather. (notice the flower pattern lightly traced into the leather)

Step 7: Flower design cut in with a swivel knife. 

Step 8: Camo tool used at flower stem and bud stem, undercut tool used to quickly bevel petal scallops.

Step 9: Check bevellers used to bevel around the entire design.

Step 10: Bar Grounder stamps used to matt down the background of the pattern.

Step 11: Flower Center applied with flower center stamp and lined shader

Step 12: Flower petals beveled with a check beveller and petal stops applied.

Step 13: Shading applied to flower petals, bud cut in and beveled.

Step 14: Petal lifters used on flower petals. (lifts the petal giving the flower a three dimensional look)

Step 15: Shading added to the stickers

Step 16: Decorative cuts added to the flower, and vines. “mule tracks” added to the vine work.

Step 17: Basket stamping started.

Step 18: Basket stamping completed. Start boarder stamp to camouflage the basket stamp edges.

Step 19: Border tooling completed, belt top completed!

Step 20: Stamp the right side belt top.

Belt Tops Sewn on Chinks