The pleather is all mine.

What if you could make a tooled leather jewelry set - necklace, earrings and uber-chic wrist cuff - in a few minutes, for a few bucks, using nothing but a hammer, a nail and a pair of scissors?

I did!

Aren't they swelegant? I trust you are in AWE of my leather-tooling expertise.

Hee hee.

So go to a thrift store (or maybe, on a lucky day, the dollar store), and buy a fake-o cheap-o pleather belt.

To make the cuff, simply trim the buckle end to the right length for your wrist, and cut a curve in the free end. Tip: be sure to cut it a little bit long at first, you don't want to end up with not enough length to tuck under the tab! With hammer and nail (or a leather punch), make a hole for the tongue. That's it! Just buckle up and wear.

To make your earrings and pendant, just start snipping out segments that have pretty tooling. Punch some more holes, add some jewelry findings, and done!

A few more examples:

In that picture, you can see one of the things I really like about this project. If you cut along the tooling lines, you often end up with unique and interesting shapes. How fun to suddenly have unexpected shapes pop out at you!

Finally, you could experiment with color. Here I added just a touch, with Sharpies:

Okay, that's today's idea. Gotta go!

It's been a real pleather.