Bracers of Gondor

These are my leather bracers I made for my Lady Aragorn costume for the May Comic Con 2013.
They're made from 4mm tooling leather (the diamond with the design on) and veg tanned rough worked leather around 2mm thick.
I hand drew then stamped in the designs free hand using a rounded beveller, I wet the tooling leather as I worked to keep it really supple- you get really good impressions in the leather without using much force, usually you use a hammer when tooling but this was all me just pushing it down with the force of my fingers!

I then dyed the leather with a medium brown wash- it came out really red (the dyes react differently to each hide) so I top stained over it with a dark brown almost black dye mix, this gave me a nice warmth to the dark brown/black.
I had already hand awl punched (a big sharp needle you use for threading/sewing) each hole around the outer edge of the design area so I could then sew it with waxed thread onto the rough leather base which I had simply dyed black.
The silver tree of Gondor / the white tree was painted on in silver leather paint.
Added brass buckles and shoe polished the entire surface of the leather and voila!

The inner sleeve is just soft leather cut into a simple gauntlet shape, hole punched, laced and top stitched for decoration- to look like padding or quilting.