Leather-mâché

Even the smallest scraps of leather shavings produced when you skive leather can be put to
good use.  

This is also something that you can use to repair small holes or gaps in leather items.

Leather-mâché produces a robust material that can be dyed, sanded smooth and even drilled.

The first stage is to chop up the leather fragments as fine as possible.

Ideally you want to produce something as close to dust as possible especially if you are using it to fill gaps or small holes. However I am going to see what can be done with a slightly chunkier mix.

The chopped up leather is then added to PVA and stirred together until al the pieces are thoroughly coated. I am going to experiment with two different mixes - one the consistency of cream and the other more like pastry.

This is the runnier version.

I am hoping that this will pour easily and be good for casting items. I have bought a couple of cheap silicone molds to experiment with.

The second, drier mix proves to be easier to handle and to mold into shape.

Now put them aside to dry out thoroughly. During the really hot weather these were dry overnight but larger pieces may take several days. Be careful as the outside dries much quicker than the core and forms a crust.

The cream like consistency produced a lot of "flash" that had to be trimmed off whereas the pastry like mix produced really clean moldings. 

I have gilded the fully dried items.

I quite like the pitted look.

So then I got over confident and tried to produce a much larger item - a hexagonal
jewelry box. Not every experiment actually works! 

As you can see the sides of the box started to collapse inwards as it continued to dry out!

So now you know how to turn this 

- into this.

If you successfully manage to make a larger item please let me know how you did it without the sides buckling. Perhaps I should have left it in the mold to dry for longer?