Leather Bracelets/Cuffs

January 4, 2013 - Day 4

Hello again!
Today I am going to make a leather cuff. My husband loves to wear leather cuffs, and he spends around $10 per cuff! I think that is crazy but who am I to judge! Well in honor of him supporting me no matter what I want to do I decided when I saw the original pin, I would give it a try, you know for him ;) Here is the original pin:

I love the look of these bellts cuffs but I could not find a belt like that, instead I found a smooth leather/sued belt at my local thrift store. Ok, so here is what you will need:

A Hammer, a leather belt, a tape measure or an existing cuff to use as a guide, a heavy duty snap tool, heavy duty snap fasteners, and scissors. First what you will want to do is to measure or use your guide to cut out a strip or two of the belt you would like to use for the cuffs, I chose to make two matching cuffs so I could not use the ends, If you  use the end this will save you a step.

After you have the pieces you want cut, if you need or want to shape the ends this is the time. I used a large cup and chalk to draw a curve line on the edges.

 Trim the edges

Next you are going to want to get out all the pieces of the fasteners that you will need.

This is the hard part, (I would suggest not using this type, it is much too hard to get through the fabric, instead try a pin style like shown in the original post). To make life a little easier I found, after much frustration, to use a piece of scrap belt under the cuff, along with the small piece of the snap tool and the hammer to get the prongs through the leather. See below:

The layering from bottom up goes scrap, cuff, prong piece, then snap tool, then you hit the tool until the prongs can be seen on the other side. Like so:

Place the socket (shown above) on the exposed prongs and place the button top in the snap tool botton.

To be clear layering goes: Snap tool bottom, cuff with prongs facing up, socket, then top of snap tool

 And hit it like a nail in the wall.

You will repeat the button steps for the stud and other prong set, and again if you chose to do two buttons like I did (next time I will only do one button)!

And ta-da! The cuff is done! I really liked how it looked when it was done, however I did have a heck of a time getting the fasteners to say on, which is why I suggest finding a different type, but over all once I learned how to get the snaps on I would say this is a fairly easy project! So hit up your thrift store and show me the cuff you made!

When I was talking to my sister about this project she suggested that a dog collar could also be made from a used belt... oh the possibilities!! Maybe I will tackle this in the future!!!

Don't for get to subscribe and to send me pictures of you projects! You can email me your pictures, questions, or comments to bdklrising@gmail.com or below in the comment area! See you all tomorrow!
~Kelsy