Leather Balloons - What You Need to Know
Leather Balloons - Art or Toys?
My leather balloons are –
Leather art objects
Not toys, knick-knacks or trinkets
What’s the difference?
1. The Cut
The tooling leather used for my leather balloons is exactly the same as that used for leather wall art, cases, handbags, shoes and hundreds of other fine products, and is prepared in exactly the same way.
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2. The Design
The nearly spherical shape alone presents construction challenges.
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Designs that line up very simply on pieces for flat projects, such as leather wall art, do not line up the same on parts that will make a 3-dimensional object. Therefore accurate and precise pre-planned designing is required.
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3. The Tooling
Leather tooling is creating designs, patterns or images into leather by means of specially-made hand tools. With tooling, designs are not simply applied to the products’ surfaces, as is usually done with toys, but, rather, the design is actually a part of the item.
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Leather tooling is a specialized art, which many leather artists have developed to a degree that is nothing short of astounding. Leather tooling, along with leather coloring (as with dyes, stains and paints) and leather product construction are three aspects of the art of leatherworking, and are completely distinct from toymaking.
Very often, it is the leather tooling that sets certain leather products apart from similar products that are not tooled.
Every leather balloon contains some amount of hand tooling. Different from the way that a lot of mass-produced toys are made, the leather parts must be tooled before they are put together.
4. The Painting
As with the tooling, the leather parts must be dyed, stained or painted before they are put together. With toys that are mass-produced by the thousands, the parts may be produced by machines with the images mechanically printed on. Or, the toy might be painted after it is assembled.
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Not so with leather products. With leather products, it is generally very difficult to apply the color after the product is assembled. Plus, it is necessary for the color to cover even beyond where two adjoining parts are stitched together.
5. The Stitching
My leather balloons, as with all of the products that I make, are hand-stitched. To be sure, many leather workers make very fine, high-quality leather products that are either partly or completely stitched by machine. Indeed, when working with certain types of leathers, machine-stitching might even be the only method that can be done.
Nevertheless, hand-stitching is a part of the art of leatherworking. A particular leather artist’s stitch work can even be a way that his or her work might be identified, as is the case with my products.
To be sure, there are people who make stuffed toys from fabrics. In those instances, the items are still toys and are usually made to be toys, irrespective of the way it is stitched.
6. Made to be Collectible
My leather balloons are not widgets.
Since I make all of my leather balloons myself by hand, every one is a new individual creation, even if the style is a duplicate of one or more leather balloons that have been made before.
My leather balloons are intentionally made to be collectible items. Each Leather Balloon's unique ID is located on the underneath side of the hanger loop on the top of the dome cap.
Also, each leather balloon is uniquely identified in the Owner’s Manual that I provide with every leather balloon. In other words, the Owner’s Manual serves as certification for that leather balloon’s unique ID, as well as its completion date.
This improves the intrinsic value of each leather balloon in a couple of ways:
First, it is possible for a person to collect every style of balloon I have made (that is, to have the complete collection).
Second, the construction process has been constantly improving since the first leather balloon was made (Balloon B1, completed June 17, 2018). By identifying a particular leather balloon and observing its completion date, one conceivably could view at what stage of development my construction process was at the time, and the product’s age could be a contributing factor in its value.
About Displaying Your Leather Balloon
Most any art object can be made all the more attractive when it is displayed as art. You can easily understand that a person undervalues a statue if he uses it as a paperweight, a doorstop, to prop open a window, or any other unsuitable use.
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With all art pieces, how they are displayed makes a huge difference. If they are displayed like cheap trinkets, they have more of a tendency to look like cheap trinkets, such as the baby mobile and air freshener shown below.
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Be thoughtful and selective about how and where you display your leather balloon. Consider how best to place it in the most favorable setting, in a way that highlights its beauty to the maximum extent, and you will discover that it will make for a truly eye-catching one-of-a-kind compliment to its location.
And, by all means, I definitely recommend displaying your leather balloon in a display case. Just as paintings are often enhanced 
when they are put into frames, so too are these leather balloons made to become more elegant when they are placed inside of a display case.
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Conclusion
On this page, my desire has been to show that my leather balloons are leather art objects, and that they are not toys, knick-knacks or trinkets. The way I always like to say it, is that my leather balloons are representations that are intended to inspire the imagination, and they are to be used to enhance interior spaces.
I do hope this leather balloon overview has been helpful. If you are considering buying one of my leather balloons (or if you already own one), I hope this has been beneficial to you in assessing what these leather balloons really are and how they should be displayed.
It has been my experience that my leather balloons are not something that people see in every store on every street corner every day. That is why I wanted to make this informational page about my flagship products.
I am confident that once you see my leather balloons, and select the best location to display and present one of your own, you will find it to be an enjoyable and truly eye-catching conversation piece.
I would very much like to talk with you about getting you one of my leather balloons (or the whole collection!). And once you have one …
· I hope you will let me know you have received it and will share your impressions of it with me, and …
· I would be really grateful and happy if you could send me a photo of how you have it displayed.