Greetings from a 'steamy' Ramsgate, KZN. I am Nicky, I grew up on a dairy farm in the Natal Midlands and had the most magical childhood. My love of nature was nurtured there amongst the moss and ferns & snowdrops. I have always read copiously, drawn pictures and painted all manner of goodies. I married in the late70's and serendipity stepped in, in the shape of Lorna, my mentor and friend, and showed me that my thing is Art on Leather. Many moons ago I had three small babes and when I found the time I painted watercolours. I painted a grasshopper all dressed in velvet & lace playing a violin, with great detail (my eyes were good then) & many other fantastical things. Lorna offered to sell them in her shop and then offered me a job handtooling (with a swivel knife) & then painting pictures on shoes & boots that they handmade. This requires the ability to make mirror image pictures that match on each shoe. Not so easy! Long story short, I made shoes myself eventually & taught many folk the art of Art on Leather.
This image is from the eighties! I had the coolest shop in Pietermaritzburg, called 'Joy Division', custom-making shoes/boots to order, then the hippest clothing & best of all the MUSIC!! & sooo many amazing lifelong buddies. That all changed as things do, I work in the Art Department at a newspaper, learnt skills delightful, specially with lettering & design, many start overs again, many, many years later, I ended up working in InDesign making a newspaper from home for my old hometown. That also ended and thus began my re-entry into Art on Leather, beginning with the owl bag. Here are a few of my efforts ...
This is a festival belt I made using shapes from Nature, tooling, painting and embellishing, this is for hands-free partying, with all quite unique. I had such fun making all the leather feathers.
The most Capacious Carryall, I made this as a laptop bag but ended up keeping it for myself and it is teaching me how to perfect the Art of making Handbags ... always a learning curve!
So, I do hope you like my work and I have given some you creative folk some inspiration, thank you for sharing my journey and be blessed.