Variance in Leather Weight and Size

This is something that came up recently in a conversation about a custom order, so I thought I would write it all out for easy reference.

So first things first. Tooling leather is sized in ounces (oz). The bigger the number in oz, the thicker the leather is.

These are the two sizes of leather that Eve and I work with. The left is 4oz leather, the right is 8oz leather.

8oz is roughly 1/8th of an inch thick. As such, 4oz is about 1/16th of an inch.

So why choose one over the other?

The thickness of the leather determines what you are able to do with it. Thin leather can be shaped dramatically with all sorts of gorgeous ridges and curves. This mask by beadmask is a beautiful example of what can be done with thin leather! This is a 4-5oz mask.

Sometimes masks with such dramatic shaping look better without tooling because the tooling can get a little warped and distorted.

As the thickness increases, it becomes more difficult to achieve such sharp folds in the leather, but tooling becomes less of a pain because there is actually depth to hammer into.

To the left, we have our Autumn Forest Mask, which is 4oz leather. As you can see, each leaf is hand tooled, but there is still a significant amount of what I call "tight flexibility." The vines can be twisted into tiny little tight curls. 4oz is a great middle ground if you want something that can be tooled as well as intricately shaped. There's also a lot of layering that can be done without making the mask too heavy or unstable.

Thick leather allows for gorgeous deep and intricate tooling. 4oz can be tooled, but not as dramatically as 8oz can be tooled. Shaping an 8oz mask is a bit trickier and requires a fair amount of wrestling to work with. It's also mildly heavier, but still very comfortable to wear.

That's not to say that you can't do some awesome things with 8oz leather in terms of shaping! The dragon mask is a great example of shape paired with detail. This is what the full mask looks like, in all of its horned and finned glory. The key difference here is that while the horns do spiral up, those spirals are wide and not at all tight like the curls in the Autumn Forest Mask.

Making the business official!

As the title states, Eve and I are finally taking the necessary steps in order to make our business all official and such. The Berkeley Pagan Festival is coming up, and in order to participate we need a resale license (which means we're going to have to start charging tax for all purchases made in CA).

In order to get a resale license, we have to register our business name AND register our partnership. The resale license is free, but the latter two are pricey. It needs to be done, though. And, while we're at it, we might as well get our business name trademarked.

We're looking into getting a membership to TechShop in San Francisco as well, which is hugely exciting! They have a lot of machinery at their disposal, which would be very handy, considering we're still working out of a small bedroom. In particular, we're looking at utilizing their laser cutters, which would be used to cut out all the detail crazy masks and most of the 8oz works. It would spare our hands the long term pain, and make production a lot quicker. I'm pretty excited about that.

Cheers
-Ashley

A break at last!

There has been next to no free time since last June! Shortly after faerieworlds, we had to rush to build up our inventory for faerieworlds harvest. Another huge success! We made even more than last time, which we expected since it was at the beginning of the Halloween rush. I'm still trying to put together a movie for that one.

so right after Harvest fest, the Halloween orders on Etsy started pouring in. At that point we had run out of leather and had to order more (and as of today we are already very close to running out again! That only lasted us 3 months). The Halloween orders were coming in at 4 per day! In one month we pulled in about $2,000. I know I say this all the time, but the masks never cease to amaze me.

Immediately after came the December holiday rush. Not quite as chaotic as October, but still a nice amount of sales.

Somehow, amidst all that, I've managed to throw together a website, take new photos, and make new designs. Have I mentioned that I'm also in college? Haha, it is really quite a thrill.

Here's the new Athena pictures!

FaerieWorlds Wrap Up

Okay, obviously  bad at this whole blog thing. That video sums up the awesome of FaerieWorlds pretty well!

In a nut shell, we sold almost half of our mask/crown stock as well as some key chains. :) We grossed $1,100 which came to a little over $200 each for profits (after the booth costs and what not). We did the best on Saturday, despite the rain! :)

Got a couple custom orders too, which we have finished and just need to ribbon and send off.

Considering our next festival, FaerieWorlds Harvest, is in the throws of the Halloween season, I expect we'll make a LOT more!

An actual Oak Myth!

I found this to be a very interesting and quite awesome tale of the "Oak Myth" :)
(In all honesty I didn't know there were Oak Myths out and about! The name came from the combination of Eve's username and my own, Oakwitch and FeatherMyth.)

So soon *twitch*

Ashley again.

Thursday morning, 6:00AM, Me, Eve, and our delightful boyfriends leave for faerieworlds. 9 hours of driving. A total of 43 masks and crowns (I'm laughing right now, thinking about our goal of 135).

Are we excited?
Yes.

Are we nervous as fuck?
Yes.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. Our last official work day! All that's left, really, is to touch up a crown, paint a dragon, varnish, ribbon, and fire proof the tent. Everything else is set.

Eve bought a cute little subaru wagon. Bessie! I trust her with my life... and our business (Bessie, don't you fucking dare mess this up for us. Just kididng I love you. But seriously).

It's scary and thrilling. I'm pretty sure we (as in, Eve) spent much more money than originally anticipated. Like, $300 just on extra vending passes and camping for the four of us, and two friends who are helping out.  Oh and our required extension chord was another $130 (10g 100ft...whyyy). But, if we sold every single mask and key chain, we would not only break even, we would each profit considerably. Good news! I just hope we don't sell out too quick.

I'm planning on taking as many pictures as possible. And of course, they will end up here :) Probably won't update again until after the festival is over. As always, thanks for the continued support.
Have a new mask design:

Time, where are you?

Oh yeah, the blog. Ashley here:

We have little over a month left before our first official vending adventure. Are we ready? Haha.... oh that's funny.

Well, we're close. Ish. Our inventory is small. At this point we have close to 30 masks completed and in the works. The tent has been secured. We have our staff. We JUST got our mask displays, which look completely awesome. Custom made! f-yeah *power fist pumpage*

At this point, the list of things to do before we are ready for FW:
-Make a lot more masks. A lot more.
-Get a fire extinguisher
-Get fire retardant spray
-Get an extension chord and a serge protector
-Invest in some sort of mirror(s)
-Invest in some bamboo flooring? That roll up kind that you see on beaches.
-See Harry Potter
-Kiss our boyfriends some more
-Make more masks
-Train ze staff
-Make masks
-Make key chains
-CAR
-Oh and more masks. That would be good.

Soon, I'll be cutting out some significant boyfriend time (sad face) to add another Mask day to the schedule. Eve and I are pretty awesome about picking vacation time haha. She has her 3 year anniversary with Mike next week, and 2 weeks after, I'm going to Vegas to celebrate Frank's 21st b-day. Then we have about a week before faerieworlds.

BUT HEY I QUIT MY JOB! So that should open up more time.
Still, I sort of have this strange mix of "omgfuck what if this doesn't work out" and "omg yaaay! Yippie skippy! Nothing can go wrong in the faerie realm la la la la la *skips over a rainbow*"

Really, we're going to rock it no matter what.

Oh heyyy, so in other awesome news... People are starting to invite us to vend at their festivals! The Berkeley Pagan Festival is on our list for next year! We went this year, but just sort of showing off the masks on our faces. They got a LOT of attention. As in, we'd be looking through booths and people would come in the booths to check out our masks instead of what was being sold at the booth. I left early, but Eve stuck around with our buddy, Keenan. A woman approached them and well guess what? The masks are tentatively going to be appearing at the Berkeley World Music Festival! Sweet. Could it get better? WHELP, I THINK SO. Keenan and Eve hit up the Berkeley Hat Shop, and the manager want's to buy some masks to sell in the shop. 


Hokay, what. We're seriously not even trying. These masks are like magnets. Magical, beautiful, delicious, magnets of amazing.

See why I quit my job?

Anyway, have some new mask designs:

Gorgeously modeled by Eve! :)