#gremble: the autobiography

[armory-rasa]

Hello Gabriel! First of all, I want to say I really love your work! It's really inspiring and detailed! I wanted to ask how you set up your own business, because it seems really hard to start working and then actually get costumers. Did you make a portfolio, or was it word of mouth? I don't know if you've written about this before, so sorry if I'm just asking again. :)

Short answer: lol, I started my own business because I’m really bad at convincing people to hire me.

Long answer: STRAP IN! (This is probably more backstory than you wanted, but I promise I’ll have some advice about the how-to at the end)

So I mentioned that the first leatherworking I did was for the Hawke cosplay, and that came out reasonably well. Then a friend of mine was like, “Hey, you should use your skillz make me some leather handcuffs” and I was like, Hokay. So when people ask “How’d you get started selling kink gear?” my smartass answer is “Because D-rings come in packs of ten not packs of two.” I made a pair for my friend…. and then made four more pairs, because else what was I going to do with D-rings? And then I made an Etsy store and put them up for sale, because what use had I for four pairs of handcuffs?

…and people bought them. o_O I was like, Can you guys not see that I have sold ZERO things before? Why do you trust me to actually deliver the goods? What makes you think I have ANY idea what I’m doing??

So that was a thing that was going on in the background – I added a basic collar to my inventory and started making them in colors that you don’t normally see kink gear in, which a lot of people quite liked, and it was a nice bit of side cash, enough that the hobby was paying for itself.

Then my lawyer (who was not at that time a lawyer) moved out to California for law school and she was like “You should come to California with me, because it’s better than Texas” and I was like, Hokay. And everyone was telling me, Ohhhh, but the job market in California is so bad!, and I was like, Nah, I’ll be fine, yo.

…Aha... ahaha, about that. I wound up in a totally above-board but very sketchy-sounding arrangement with one of her professors in which my official job title was “houseboy.” We met at a gay bar called Headhunters where he was like–

The professor: “So what do you do?” Me: “I’m looking for a job.”The professor: “I’m looking for someone to clean my hot tub! I’ll start you at $12/hr.”Me: “Hokay.”

So between running his odd jobs and the money I was making selling kink gear (about $2000 over the course of that first year), I was keeping myself afloat.

Then The Hobbit happened.

I saw the posters, thought Kili was hot, decided to take a stab at his bracers. I finished the first one just before we left to go see the movie, tossed it up in the shop – and it sold before we even got out of the movie.

That was when the floodgates opened and practically overnight, leatherworking went from being a sideline gig to being my fulltime job. (To wit: I made $250 in December 2012 and *$3,500* in January 2013. That’s more money in one month than I’d made doing leatherworking the entire previous year.) People were buying Kili bracers by the dozen, and flooding me with inquiries asking, Can you do Fili’s bracers? Can you do Thorin’s bracers? Can you do Thorin’s belt? Can you do Kili’s quiver? Can you do Legolas’s bracers?

And I was like, Hokay. (The professor was bemused, and only slightly grumpy at how I suddenly had less time for him.)

Granted, that kind of boom doesn’t last, as I would learn subsequently. There’s a rush of interest when something is new, but nothing sustains that level of demand forever. I got really lucky because I happened to jump onto the Hobbit bandwagon right as it was kicking off, so my bracers were out there first, the first thing people saw when they went googling for Hobbit cosplay. Relatively few other costumers ever even bothered to make the pieces that would be competing with mine, since I’d already done them, and done them very well, (and was doing it really cheap since I didn’t know the value of my labor then), so for a while I was about the only game in town when it came to dwarf leatherworking.

Dwarf costumes kept me fed for about six months before interest started to wane, by which point I’d diversified into MCU Loki armor too. That’s been the story of my business since – keeping an eye out for new fandoms with cool costumes that are in my skillset, and being on the ball about getting them done and posted as early as possible. I cannot overstate the advantage of being the *first* one to do a costume, because there are few fandoms that have truly long-term staying power, so you have to be there when the hype is highest. (Dragon Age, Zelda, Star Wars, etc, have a core of dedicated fans who will cosplay it until their dying day, but those are low-volume markets. My Dragon Age items are not my highest sellers, they are my labors of love.)

I often start with making a small, inexpensive item from a fandom, just enough to put me on the radar when people start googling for their cosplay – like a hook to reel them in. Customers will frequently ask if you can do other pieces from the same costume or the same universe (I started with the Wonder Woman tiara, and built the rest of the set as people asked for it; likewise, the Aquaman armor grew out of a single bracer; people who have seen my Loki stuff have commissioned Enchantress and Scarlet Witch), but they won’t usually ask a Lord of the Rings leatherworker if you can do stuff from, say, Game of Thrones. (Even though I totally could if anyone ever asked for it.)

I will say that specializing in cosplay puts you at the mercy of whatever’s trending, and the lulls between fandom booms can be deadly – when your income suddenly drops from a couple thousand dollars a month to a couple hundred, you best hope you’ve got enough of a cushion to ride that out until the next boom comes along. The more fandoms you’re in, the more diverse your portfolio, the less hard those bust cycles will hit you.

My shop pretty much is my portfolio, because I don’t take anything down (except when I stopped selling kink gear) even after interest is long gone, since it still showcases the styles and techniques I can do. I have a deviantArt with my stuff, mainly because I’ve found that dA – for whatever reason – indexes in google image search faster and higher than any other social media platform. It wasn’t until about this time last year that I finally got a facebook and started making a more concerted effort to maintain a social media presence and promote my business. It’s… coming along. I’m slightly better at remembering to post these days. >_>

I think it’s less about word of mouth than about whether people can find you when they’re googling. (~Search engine optimization~ or whatever.) There are tricks you can do to get yourself ranked higher, but I’ve never tried any of that stuff, just made sure that my listings, etc, are tagged with the right keywords to get picked up when potential customers go googling.

It is hard work (I work… a lot….) but it’s also a lot of fun – there is no job I would rather be doing, and I consider myself very lucky that I’ve been able to turn my passion into my career. (Which is like the most cliched thing to say, but it’s true – there are Etsy sellers who would KILL to be able to quit their day job and focus on their hobby full-time, so I’m aware that I’ve been quite fortunate.)

Anyway. I hope you enjoyed the novel I wrote for you. :D

[armory-rasa]

How did you learn how to work leather? How did you become interested in it?

O hay! Strap in, friends, it’s a long story.

So I’m almost entirely self-taught – I started out just going into Tandy Leather (it’s an international chain, look ‘em up online to find your closest one) and asking a lot of very stupid questions until I learned how to ask the right questions. It helped that there was a hottie working at my local store, and coming in with a list of questions every time gave me a ready-made excuse to talk to him. (My biggest initial confusion was not realizing that you can’t make armor out of chrome-tan, which seems obvious in retrospect but it’s a *very* common newbie misunderstanding, and why I lead with the veg-tan/chrome-tan distinction when I teach armor-making.)

Instructional books on leatherworking tend to be pretty useless for costuming, besides teaching you very basic skills like “this is how you make a buckle strap” or “this is how to do a saddle stitch,” because they all assume that what you want to make with your leatherworking skillz are the most godawful-hideous bags, belts, and notebook covers in creation. (Even Tandy seems to think that their clientele still consists of nothing but cowboys and cowboy-wannabes, and I’m like, mate, hate to break it to you, but it’s cosplayers and kinky people these days.) Al Stohlman is a name you’ll come across a lot if you’re looking for instructional books on leather – and rightly so, the man was a prolific writer and definitely knew his stuff… even if his taste SERIOUSLY left something to be desired. o_o

If you’re just starting out, there are tons of youtube videos that demonstrate different projects and techniques, though I myself didn’t realize that until I was well past the level of most youtube tutorials. It can still be useful to watch someone do a project from start to finish, even a project you already know how to do, because one unavoidable side effect of being self-taught (as most costume leatherworkers are) is that we’re all reinventing the wheel; we develop our own methods to do what we need to do, but they’re not necessarily the fastest or most reliable method, and we don’t have a sensei to show us a better way. (Or to break us of the bad habits we develop.) Multiple times I’ve been watching a youtube tutorial and seen the presenter use a technique slightly different from mine and gone HOLY SHIT THAT IS BRILLIANT AND SO SIMPLE, I’M GOING TO START DOING IT THAT WAY IMMEDIATELY. Granted, it often means sitting through a 45 minute video to learn one cool trick. -_-

Leatherworker.net is a valuable resource if you have a specific question – it’s a forum full of people who do every kind of leatherworking under the sun, and there are always people who are willing to answer newbie questions. That said, I have mixed feelings about the people who hang out on lw.net – it would appear that leatherworking, as a hobby, tends to attract an extremely conservative crowd, both politically and in their willingness to accept new ideas in the craft. A lot of the old-timers are very “my way or the highway” and not particularly helpful when you want to deviate from exactly what they prescribe. (A conversation might go like: you: “What can I do to make cheap/spongy leather tool better?” them: “don’t use cheap leather. you shouldn’t be cheaping out on that.” you: “…not what I asked, thanks.”) Or even when there are multiple solutions to a question, they’re convinced that their way is RIGHT and anything else is WRONG. I think this is also a result of being self-taught – for lack of official certifications to hang on the wall, a lot of people seem to feel that the only way to prove their street cred is by undermining and one-upping other leatherworkers. So, y'know, fuck them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Recently I joined the SCA, which offers many opportunities for learning new crafting hobbies, and even though I’m pretty much the highest-level leatherworker in the area (I mean – I’d like to sound more modest, but it is what it is), there are still gaps in my knowledge (again – the result of being self-taught) that they’re helping me bridge. Namely, taking my armor from purely decorative to something that could actually function in combat – my history in cosplay means that job 1 is looking pretty, while being able to “move” and “sit down” is just a pleasant bonus. From the SCA guys, I’m learning how to pattern armor that allows for a better range of motion and how to do the wax-hardening that makes it nearly as durable as metal.

Mostly though, it’s a lot of just doing it – trial and error… and error… and steadily making fewer errors, and getting a little bit better with every project. (When I say “don’t do X” in my tutorials, there is usually a reason for it, a reason that I learned the hard way.) Pay attention to detail (keep your holes straight and ffs, FINISH YOUR EDGES), compare your work to that of people better than you to see where you can improve. Leatherworker.net has a subforum where you can post pictures of your work for critique, and the responses are generally honest without being cruel (though also without being particularly tactful). Don’t be satisfied with “good enough,” figure out what you need to improve and then learn how to do it.

But it also helps that I just *took* to leather – it’s my medium, the one I clicked with in a way that nothing else has quite been able to match, not sewing or plastic-casting, not sculpture or woodworking or foam fabrication. It’s my wheelhouse, it’s my happy place, it’s where I’m going to stay and keep learning and keep growing. :)

[armory-rasa]

A Cautionary Tale for Leatherworkers: water- vs. spirit-based dyes

So I had a boyfriend who was a bit of a dandy, adored fancy clothes in the sort of colors that usually only costumes come in. Since I tend to wear black and more black, while we were dating I was delighted to use him as an excuse to make all kinds of nice things in the colors that I can never actually bring myself to wear. Because *nice things* generally come in *respectable colors*, good luck finding quality neon pink cravats, or lime green silk spats, or an orange leather belt, unless you make it yourself.

Anyway, my gifts were all received very well, until we were living in Tokyo for the summer, during the rainy season, and we got caught out in the rain at one point, as you are guaranteed to do if you are in Tokyo during the rainy season, and we're soaked through like the sad foreigners we are, and I glance over and realize that his entire midsection is a broad, bleeding band of orange.

The belt is apparently not the slightest bit waterproof.

(Years later, the guy at the leather store is like, “Tan-kote? lol yeah, Tan-kote runs if you *sneeze* on it too hard.” Then why’d you SELL IT TO ME, ASSHOLE??)

“Oh my god!” I wailed. “I am so, so sorry!”

Then amended it with: “Well, let's be honest -- you and I both know I hated that shirt.”

(Incidentally, as soon as he washed the shirt, ALL the orange dye came out and it was good as new again, left not a stain (alas). Which just goes to show how ridiculously not-colorfast water-based dyes are.)

Anyway, we got back from Japan, we broke up. I switched from water-based dyes to spirit dyes (water cannot fuck with that which is not water-based!), which are probably terrible for the environment and require a road trip out to Reno to acquire, thanks to California’s chemical laws, but c'est la vie, at least they don't bleed all over the place.

That was like a year ago, and then a couple weeks ago the ex and I resumed diplomatic relations.

("But formed no treaties?" my lawyer asked.

"No," I said. "Nor shall he be resuming Most Favored Nation status.")

"Hey, I figured out the issue with that belt," I told him. "Give it to me next time we hang out, I can fix it so that it doesn't run -- I'll soak it to get the last of the water dye out, and then redo it with spirit dye, it’ll be great."

"Uh," he said awkwardly. "I think you underestimate how angry I was with you when we broke up. I... don't have it anymore."

Well then.

**

Anyway, the moral of the story is that water-based dyes (aka, Eco-Flo, hate to call you out by name, but there you are) are dodgy as hell. Fiebings or Angelus are the way to go.