Instructables member Mikaela Holmes continues to inspire us with her leathercraft projects. We’ve already featured her amazing Millennium Falcon handbag and her tutorial on 3D printing leather tooling stamps. Now we bring you a project that seems perfect for early spring, a convertible leather beverage caddy that can be carried by hand or saddlebagged to a bike and can carry either soda/beer or wine bottles.
In the documentation, Mikaela does her usual impressive job of carefully taking you through the entire project step-by-step. She starts off with the tools and materials you need, how to design and plan your caddy, how to create the pattern, cut it, fold it, etc.
Each of her projects features different leatherworking skills. For this caddy build, rivets and snaps are important to the construction, so she details how to punch the holes and drive the rivets and snaps to hold the whole thing together.
The caddy also has a fun statement, a Harry Potter shout-out, that runs along the top straps of the holder, “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” As Mikaela points out, “Only Muggles carry beer in cardboard six packs.” To accomplish this, she shows you how to use letter stamping tools. She printed her statement out on paper first, to make sure she had the spacing right (cleverly making use of rivet placement for some of the O’s), and she “cased” (wet) the leather firsthand to allow it to more easily accept the stamp impressions.
From there it’s just a matter of dying the straps, attaching them to the main body, and assembling the entire thing. What you end up with is a gorgeous beverage holder that is sure to get you countless oohs and ahhs if you walk into any party with it (and an even bigger reaction when people discover that you made it yourself). And it would also be a great addition to a any biking picnic lunch.
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