I'm so happy to have found your wonderful forum!

My reason for being here is, at the moment, something of a mystery to me. I'm that  type of person who wanders through life, following signs that may or may not lead to a destination but certainly make the journey more interesting.

For the past several years, I've been making one-of-a-kind, masquerade-style sculpted leather masks -- based in part on the influence of the masquerade scene in the movie, Labyrinth. More recently, I've been contemplating making a sculpted leather Marionette. For the longest time I thought I was stuck on the 'how' of it, but in fact it was pointed out to me recently that it's actually 'why' that has caused the delay.

Because many seemingly unrelated events keep pointing me towards Marionettes, I am here to actively explore. I've no idea where I'm headed, but I am certain that the journey has begun.

And now I can read your posts without feeling as if I'm peeking in the windows of your workshops.

face0dd
www.myspace.com/face0dd

  so glad that you found this great place.....please make your self at home and ask any questions or teach us something out working with leather.....we love to share and learn....pics of your work would be great. 

Daryl H

Well, its great to have you on the forum, im sure you will find alot of info to help you, and im positive that you will find alot of people eager to learn a few things from you, i personally am quite interested in finding out a few bits and bobs about working with leather, sounds very difficult and i can imagine that it may be fairly expensive buying the leather, but then again, you can enlighten us in our ignorance!!
hope we can help,
Ben.

Welcome to Puppets and Stuff............. I Love your mask, each one has its own personality. If marionettes is your desire then you have come to the right place. We have some very talented and supportive folks here.

Billy D.

Welcome to P&S.  We'll be more than happy to help you find the answers to puppet building and look forward to you help us learn how to incorporate leather into our puppet designs.

Hey  ,  to P&S

welcome

Welcome!  Your masks are beautiful!! Thanks for sharing with us!

Love your leather mask!  I used to work Renaissance Festivals and there where several crafts persons that made these.  Never got one since they cost a pretty penny but it always amazed me how intricate and detailed a leather mask can be.  If you can do that you can build puppets.   I do hope you'll share some of your techniques for working the leather.  I think it could be handy on puppets when building them hats, shoes and other things. 

Thank you all for such a warm welcome!

I promise to share leatherworking techniques with those of you who are interested. I also typically have an abundance of smaller scrap leather pieces, which I will be happy to share.

Currently, I'm working on an art doll that will probably be an Old World Santa, although my hands keep trying to make him into an elf. After that guy is finished, I will begin working on a Marionette. I'm sure I'll have questions, but I'm too stubborn to ask until I've blundered my way through at least a first attempt. Mostly, my questions will be of a technical nature - where to connect the strings, what sort of string to use, etc.

At the moment, I have limited computer time because my family is giving me the 'when's dinner?!' look. Guess I better use my creative efforts on some stir-fry, for now.

~Tammy