How to make leather-look felt
Technique Tuesday!
You’re not going to believe how easy it is to do this surface treatment. I’ve asked people to try to figure out what the material is without letting them feel the backside of it, and they always guess leather! Like I said yesterday, it looks a lot more like leather in real life than it does in my photos.
Materials:
Square of white felt
Fusible web
Extra heavy acrylic gel
Soft acrylic gel
Acrylic paints - raw sienna, burnt sienna, interference goldTools:
Iron
Parchment paper
Foam brush
Paper towel
Heat gun
- Iron fusible web to the felt.
- Smear the surface with acrylic gels. Use fingers. Let partly dry.
- Drip on light paint color using foam brush. Dab lightly with paper towel.
- Drip on dark paint color. Dab lightly. Repeat layers until piece is covered.
- When almost dry, spread on a light layer of interference gold. Dab lightly and let dry thoroughly before using.
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POSTED IN: Fabric & Fiber, Mixed Media, Technique Tuesday, Tutorials & Techniques
25 opinions for How to make leather-look felt
TJBookarts»Blog Archive » Tuesday morning musings…
May 6, 2008 at 10:29 am
[…] out these instructions over on the Layers Upon Layers blog for making a leather look felt. It’s definitly on my […]
June Campbell
May 6, 2008 at 1:52 pm
This is a great idea, but could you please clarify what is fusible web? Where do you get it? I have not heard of this product.
Cyndi
May 6, 2008 at 2:48 pm
It’s a thin woven sheet of glue! You can get it at any fabric store…Wonder Under is one brand that is widespread. Usually it’s used to iron two pieces of fabric together, but in this case, you’re only ironing it to the top of one piece.
karishma
May 6, 2008 at 3:58 pm
So you paint on the fusible web? Not on the felt side? Does that mean you could do this technique on other fabrics too, or even paper, since you’re not really using the texture of the felt to contribute to the final feel? (Or am I missing something?)
Cyndi
May 6, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Well, yes and no! The felt actually does contribute to the texture since the webbing is so thin. But on the other hand, it would be very fun to see what did happen with other fabrics.
I would stick to felt or thick interfacing to get the leather look. The other reason I chose felt was because I wanted something easy to sew through :-)
Cyndi
May 6, 2008 at 4:02 pm
And it would be fun to see what happened with paper, I forgot to say!
freebird(Timaree)
May 6, 2008 at 10:38 pm
It looks like you used the cheap felt found in craft stores or Walmart, not wool felt. Am I right? I hope so as I have a lot of that stuff around and now that I’ve used wool felt for beading I don’t like the feel of the other stuff. This would be a good use for it. Maybe in other colors too.
Cyndi
May 7, 2008 at 10:44 am
Yeah, the cheap stuff. It might be…what? polyester? Other colors would be fine too, since you’re going to paint it. It might be interesting to try more transparent washes of color on a colored felt base…
Samm
May 7, 2008 at 6:45 pm
….and (probably to state the obvious???) I guess that by adding a final coat of some sort of acrylic medium (i love polymer gloss varnish) would give the “leather” a more long lasting finish??
It’s great - I’m going to have a bash with my mixed media group - they’ll love it!
cheers
Cyndi
May 7, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Oooooo…the gloss topcoat would make *shiny* leather! (See, I can state the obvious too ;-) )
Valerie Foster
May 8, 2008 at 2:34 am
Great tutorial, Cyndi. Thanks for posting it. I do believe I’ll have to try this. I have gel medium, but not the extra heavy. Do you think that will work okay?
It never occurred to me to paint on felt before. But I have used a heat gun on it to melt and distort it. It works well for that.
Eileen
May 8, 2008 at 6:36 am
Did I miss something? When do you use the heat gun?
I love doing faux things. People are always so intrigued by them.
Thanks for another great idea!
Cyndi
May 8, 2008 at 8:34 am
Thanks Val! Yeah, I don’t see why you couldn’t do the the whole thing with plain gel medium. Just let it build up a bit and texture it…maybe add a few more thin layers.
Cyndi
May 8, 2008 at 8:36 am
Oh…I forgot to mention the heat gun! I just use it to dry the medium because I’m much too impatient to wait till it air dries ;-)
You could get it really close to the medium and make the stuff bubble and froth a bit for more texture if you wanted to.
Artsy blogging round-up
May 9, 2008 at 8:00 am
[…] Layers Upon Layers Take one cheap piece of felt and transform it into “leather”! […]
Artsy bloggers roundup for May 9-2008
May 9, 2008 at 12:18 pm
[…] Layers Upon Layers Take one cheap piece of felt and transform it into “leather”! […]
Noreen Crone-Findlay
May 9, 2008 at 12:39 pm
This is so neat, Cyndi! Great technique for making the exact shade of ‘leather’ for doll shoes!
Cyndi
May 9, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Excellent, Noreen! I never thought about doll clothes…it would be so much easier to make small items from the felt than from real leather…
Art Blog Explorations
May 9, 2008 at 8:15 pm
[…] Layers Upon Layers Take one cheap piece of felt and transform it into “leather”! http://www.layersuponlayers.com/how-to-make-leather-look-felt/ […]
Peggy
May 10, 2008 at 2:33 am
Cool, too bad we can’t touch it!
Artsy Bloggers Round-up #11
May 10, 2008 at 9:25 am
[…] How to make leather-look felt from Layers Upon Layers. […]
So-Artsy Links from Lifestyles Channel and Beyond
May 10, 2008 at 4:04 pm
[…] Layers Upon Layers Take one cheap piece of felt and transform it into “leather”. […]
Artsy bloggers roundup
May 11, 2008 at 6:41 pm
[…] Layers Upon Layers Take one cheap piece of felt and transform it into “leather”! […]
Arts Bloggers - A Creative Community of Crafters Share New Ideas with You
May 12, 2008 at 8:04 pm
[…] Cyndi, at Layers Upon Layers, shows us how to take one cheap piece of felt and transform it into “leather”! […]
Artful Links for You « Welcome to Meredith’s World
May 13, 2008 at 5:23 pm
[…] http://www.layersuponlayers.com/how-to-make-leather-look-felt/ - a tutorial on making plain old felt look like leather, the RSS feed contains other great stuff like yarn bombing, experiments with Golden Products new digital mediums and more. […]
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