About the leather cuff bracelet
I was excited about this one.
The octopus design is a challenging one for the Cricut to cut because all the little suckers on the tentacles create a lot of intricate cutting work. I managed to find a scrap of vegetable tanned (vegtan) leather at my local leather shop for a few dollars. I thought it might just be thin enough to work.
The other challenge with this bracelet is that I wanted to use a leather dye technique that involved shaving cream. With this technique, I’ve found that thinner leathers get really saturated from the moisture in the shaving cream, and they dry crispy. So I tried to work as quickly as possible with the shaving cream, and this ended up not being a problem.
Below are some high-level photos of some parts of the process, and also the finished result.
If you’d like to make your own, I’ve written a post with step-by-step instructions on how to create these kinds of Cricut leather bracelets. If you’d rather just buy one, I sometimes sell similarly-styled laser-cut leather bracelets in my Etsy shop. See if there are any you like!
The making process
At a high level, the process involved:
- Finding/purchasing a piece of scrap vegtan leather at a local leather supply shop.
- Uploading this design file into Cricut Design Space.
- FYI, you can purchase this design (along with three other octopus designs that come in the same bundle) in my Etsy shop for a few dollars if you’d like to make it! I also have free bracelet patterns available on this site (just filter for bracelet files).
- Cutting the pattern using my Cricut Maker.
- Dyeing the bracelet using the shaving cream technique.
- Buffing out the extra dye, applying a conditioning oil, and then sealing the leather with a finishing product.
- Adding snap fastener closures.
And that’s it! Here are some images of the process. Sadly, I didn’t take as many as I should have.
The finished result
The bracelet cut much better than I expected, and I think if I had used a newer blade it would have been even better. I also loved how the colours turned out, and there is very little to no rub-off of the dye; all that buffing and sealing did the trick!
