Haley Harding

 Hello again! It has been a great week. I finally finished my belt and now can move on. I am definitely behind schedule on my action plan, but that's ok! I am very happy with my results of my belt, except for one small issue... The leather dye that I bought said it was supposed to be a light brown color, but it ended up being very dark and kind of ruined the color scheme I had in mind for the name and the belt itself. Minor details, but I am starting to like the color even though I have to repaint the name. I am thinking about getting a blue paint for the name and I think it will match really nicely with the dark dye of the belt. All I have left to do is to put all the pieces back on and then the belt is good to wear once it completely dries out. Very glad you all were with me on this crazy adventure and I am exited to get my next project started in this upcoming week! This is my finished belt, and as you can see the color turned out very dark but I think that it will eventually li...

Hello again! This week has been great! My hand is still cramping from all the work I did this week, but that's ok. So this week I really got to work. I punched all the holes that were needed for my belt and got it shaped to fit my belt buckle. I also got almost all of the tooling done, all I have left is to tool the border. I am wanting to finish this up next week so I can move on with my action plan. I am actually pretty proud with how my results turned out, aka, I am happy Mr. Rehbein made me practice because the basket weave pattern that I did lined up almost perfectly and I had little to no trouble at all. I also decided to tool my last name on the back, which I should have done more mathematically but I just but it up to my back and and had someone mark the belt loops to get a rough estimate of where to put the letters. I am actually pretty surprised at how centered I was able to get the name and how it almost perfectly lined up with where it sits on my back. Overall I am very...

 Hello again! I finally got my leather in! Thankfully it has been a very productive week, and I have moved along very nicely with my action plan. Once I got the leather in I was able to measure out the width of the belt and get everything cut out and shaped. After everything was finally shaped out, I was able to put on a border and start out lining the bend for my belt buckle and the spots for the holes. I was very exited to get started tooling the belt, but Rehbein advised me to practice a bit first. I am definitely glad I did because it was kind of a mess and my lines were very uneven. Although I am happy to say that I got much better by the time I started my second practice piece and my lines were all pretty even. The pattern I am using for my belt is a basket weave with a crescent moon type of border. I tried a couple of different weave punches and border punches but I finally decided on ones that I liked. Hopefully next week I should get started on tooling my belt and then I c...

 So guess who loves their life? Not me that's for sure. I am about to come unglued on Mr. Rehbein so I am just going to get started on my Hey Dude tops. I got started on my design a couple of day ago since I apparently have nothing better to do with my life since Mr. Rehbein won't order my stuff, but it's fine we'll just do it ourselves. I guess my new action plan is to flip flop my original plan and work on my Dude tops first, which I am okay with. I think this part of my genius hour is actually going pretty well, so I can actually be proud of myself for this one. The only issue is now that I need to order my own leather kit so that I know that I will have all the tools I need to get started. I really only need a few stamps and a few different sized carving tools, and some sewing things so I can sew them on. I really haven't decided if I want to do the exact same thing on each top or if I want to change it up a bit, because I have seen that done and it looks really...

 Hello again! Welcome back to the shit show. Apparently it is impossible for me to get anything done, so let's just get into it. So it turns out Mr. Rehbein didn't actually order my stuff, so there goes another week without following my action plan. So I just decided to start something else. So earlier this week I took a piece of scrap leather and started tooling it to get some practice. I think it turned out pretty well considering I had no help because Mr. Rehbien was always "busy" whenever I asked him if I could get some guidance.  This is the piece that I started to practice on and I was able to get this done all on Tuesday. I learned pretty quickly that you have to get the leather wet before you start or the tools won't make an impression in the leather.  So today in Ag I started making a few cozies to set coffee cups on. Cutting in a circle with a knife was definitely an interesting experience, but I was able to get it done. I honestly have no idea how to sm...

 Hello again! Guess who's already behind. I got some leather ordered for my belt because Mr. Rehbein informed me that the leather in the farm shop was too thick to start making my belt. I used the Montana Leather website to order just a small piece of hide, so once it gets here I can actually start on my belt. So, in order to be some what productive this week, Mr. Rehbein went over some of the tools with me in the farm shop so I could get a better understanding of what to do once my leather arrives. I am pretty eager to get started punching because I want to make some pretty cool designs and I also was taught how to paint and seal the paint in the leather, so I am pretty exited to get started on that. Also this week I found some designs for the belt and what I would do for my final product, and I am hoping to add some paint to it as well.  So the trusty YouTube was also a big help this week since I couldn't actually get started. I found a few more good videos on how to cut, sm...