“Fulcrum One, this is Fulcrum Leader, I read you loud and clear.”
“Watch your nose, Fulcrum Two, you’re coming in too tight. Ease back on your throttle.”
Watched Dunkirk for the first time this week, shocked I’ve never sat down to watch it before. Entire time I was swapping the pilots on screen out for Ahsoka and Barriss (because I’m a menace to society) so here. Have Ahsoka (with the world on her shoulders), and her growing squad. (the rando is Collins (Dunkrik), because I thought… why not? Try and stop me.)
So I got a commission request for Barriss Offee’s belt, from Star Wars, to which I said, “…who?” and promptly googled it. And then I said yes, because it’s totally in my wheelhouse. But the tooling on it was more interesting than what I usually do, so let’s look at the steps involved.
Starting with a screencap for reference:
Import it into Inkscape, clean up the pattern with vectors:
It is going to be attached to the front of a buckle blank to make it a functional buckle, and the reference pic turned out to be a perfect fit for the larger one. So trace your 4 1/8″ x 2 3/4″ rectangle onto the thickest veg-tan leather you’ve got (I used 10 oz):
Cut it out and clip the corners:
Apply duct tape to the underside, because stamping compresses and stretches the leather. Usually the amount of stretching is negligible, but for this project, you need it to stay precisely the same size after tooling:
Soak it underwater for 10-15 seconds. I didn’t photograph this step, but casing is necessary before you can carve and stamp leather. And you have to duct tape it before you get it wet, or else the tape won’t stick.
Use a stylus & stitching groover with modeling head to trace your pattern. Be very precise with this and the next step, because with a design this simple, any deviations from symmetry will be verynoticeable and unsightly:
Carve lines with a swivel knife. (Note that I did notcarve the line around the edge, that is just to keep your stamping aligned.)
Use an edge beveler to round off the edges of the leather. (Usually this would be done aftertooling, but in this case, the rope border looks better if you bevel the edge first):
Tesselating rope border (Craftool stamp R956):
Beveling around the design (B201, B203):
Textured backgrounding to make the design pop (E294, E294-04):
Pear shading – eh, not my best stamp. I don’t get much practice with this one (P709, P972):
And I debated using a stamp to do this part, but decided I’d have more control and flexibility with the swivel knife again:
Remove the duct tape. Tooling complete!
Next step will be deciding how I want to paint/dye it.
I’ll look into designing more in the future maybe? We’ll see where this goes.
[ID: An illustration of Barriss Offee, a Star Wars character, she is facing forward with her hands raised near her waist. Her light pink hijab is wrapped around and matches the inner lining of the dress she wears. There are light blue puff sleeves made of a semi-transparent fabric. There are small adornments in silver at the base of the puff sleeves and the cinch at her waist. End ID.]
after their daring escape off of coruscant, our beloved trio split up to avoid the empires clutches! our heroes spend two months alone on the run, but when the time comes to reunite, their trio has become… a duo!? why hasn’t aya rejoined them?! where has she gone?! will they be able to work together without her calming presence?! find out in… the shocking disappearance!
I want Lucasfilm to have Barriss show up in the Ahsoka series with the condition that they have to weave into the storylines this conversation
Ahsoka: oh gee golly its barriss! *shocked*
Barriss:Yeah I’m so glad that they finally got the second mind-controlling-geonosian-brain-worm-thing out when I showed up at a RHC (Rebel Health Centre) and it was a SITH mind-controlling-geonosian-brain-worm-thing and thats why I blew up the temple but they got it out now and i’m still as religious and modest and gorgeously stunning as ever.
Ahsoka: i’m happy too and the same thing happened to a bunch of people who WEREN’T Muslim-coded so that everyone knows it was just a sad fucking coincidence and sith brain worms yeah ur a legend.
Ahsoka: btw luminara mourned for you and got to have emotions.
Ahsoka: also yeah now lets do something kickass and have an episode/another series where you’re in the lead and don’t fucking take anyone’s shit and actively fight opression and don’t have a random scene where you take your hijab off <3
So I got a commission request for Barriss Offee’s belt, from Star Wars, to which I said, “…who?” and promptly googled it. And then I said yes, because it’s totally in my wheelhouse. But the tooling on it was more interesting than what I usually do, so let’s look at the steps involved.
Starting with a screencap for reference:
Import it into Inkscape, clean up the pattern with vectors:
It is going to be attached to the front of a buckle blank to make it a functional buckle, and the reference pic turned out to be a perfect fit for the larger one. So trace your 4 1/8″ x 2 3/4″ rectangle onto the thickest veg-tan leather you’ve got (I used 10 oz):
Cut it out and clip the corners:
Apply duct tape to the underside, because stamping compresses and stretches the leather. Usually the amount of stretching is negligible, but for this project, you need it to stay precisely the same size after tooling:
Soak it underwater for 10-15 seconds. I didn’t photograph this step, but casing is necessary before you can carve and stamp leather. And you have to duct tape it before you get it wet, or else the tape won’t stick.
Use a stylus & stitching groover with modeling head to trace your pattern. Be very precise with this and the next step, because with a design this simple, any deviations from symmetry will be verynoticeable and unsightly:
Carve lines with a swivel knife. (Note that I did notcarve the line around the edge, that is just to keep your stamping aligned.)
Use an edge beveler to round off the edges of the leather. (Usually this would be done aftertooling, but in this case, the rope border looks better if you bevel the edge first):
Tesselating rope border (Craftool stamp R956):
Beveling around the design (B201, B203):
Textured backgrounding to make the design pop (E294, E294-04):
Pear shading – eh, not my best stamp. I don’t get much practice with this one (P709, P972):
And I debated using a stamp to do this part, but decided I’d have more control and flexibility with the swivel knife again:
Remove the duct tape. Tooling complete!
Next step will be deciding how I want to paint/dye it.
