The four roll leather case is finished. Took only 30min's or so to complete, not counting drying time for the dye. The leather has no stitching, only 4 rivets and 1 snap holding it all together. The plastic case originally had a belt clip but I cut it off because it cluttered up the look of the entire case once the leather was added. I also stamped "35MM" and the word "Four" on opposing sides of the case - meaning four rolls of 35mm film....ha,ha. I'm happy with the results - project complete.

My next leather crafting project will be another film holder. I found this hard plastic canister made to hold film on eBay for only a few bucks. The bottom is stamped "Material Corporation, Patents Pending, Made In Japan." and the top has a cool etched diagram of rain drops, 4 rolls of film and 3 big arrows pointing towards the etched diagrams of film. Perhaps it means that the case is waterproof and also contains rolls of film. There's also a belt clip on the side but I plan to remove it because I don't want to stitch leather around it. This project will have the same look and feel as my other two leather film holders - I need to buy more tooling leather but it should be done in a few days. After the completion of this project I'm planning to make a leather film box that holds 10 rolls of 35mm film.

My prototype leather dark slide holder ended up being the final product. I re-stitched the edges which made the leather fit perfectly around the holder. I had planned to attach a lanyard but the whole thing fits in my back pocket so well that I decided to leave it as-is. The dark slide is housed inside a hard molded plastic holder thats normally attached to the back of a Hasselblad A12 film back with adhesive strips. You can find them online for under $20. I tested my finished projects ability to protect my Hasselblad dark slide if I accidentally sat down with it in my back pocket. It totally works - my dark slide survived and emerged from the holder as flat as when it went in.....Project complete!

Just finished stitching together another leather film holder. This one is for a single roll of 120mm film. The plastic container courtesy of Rollei Retro 100 Tonal. I stamped the lower portion of the leather with the numbers "120" to represent the film type. It turned out so well that I went back and stamped the numbers "35" on my previous leather film holder which holds dual 35mm film rolls. My stitching needs more practice but with each leather crafting project I'm only gonna get better. Next up is a dark slide holder....stay tuned.

This 35mm leather film holder was totally inspired by Patrick Ng. I follow Patrick on flickr and last year he posted a photo of a leather case he crafted from sections of leather, rivets, snaps, a clasp and some thread all wrapped around a plastic Rollei dual film container. For me it was love at first sight, I had to have one. I'm sure many of Patrick's followers have offered to pay him to recreate his leather goods for them but I don't think he would - he's such a busy person. I was sure that if I had the right materials I could make one myself - so I set out to find what I needed. I got plenty of tools and supplies from Tandy Leather located here in the Bay Area as well as two sizes of clasps from Ace Hardware - the rest was donated by my mother-in-law who has lot's of leather crafting goodies stashed in her garage. I ordered the Rollei film with container on eBay and I plan to order at least one more. I've also got a roll of Rollei 120mm with container in route and should be here in the next day or so - it too will get wrapped. My mother-in-law gave me valuable tips and plenty of coaching before I got started, and my wife helped out with advise when I had to make decisions about cuts and rivet placement. This project took about 2.5 hours total and to be honest....it wasn't that hard. I plan to make at least two more of different shapes in the coming weeks. I don't own a fancy leather camera bag to hang my new little film holder from but I'll have one soon enough.

Patrick Ng is a connoisseur of fine writing instruments, elegant paper, travelers notebooks, leather goods uniquely hand-crafted by himself, vintage cameras, awesome GTD (getting things done) inspired organizational techniques, Moleskine art, world travel, and so much more.

Check out his flickr photostream at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moleskineart/
And his website: http://scription.typepad.com/