Leather Award Medallions: Order of the Opal (Atlantia)

My original plan for the A&S 50 Challenge, back when I first learned of it, was to do a set of leather award medallions for the Kingdom of Atlantia. Eventually, I decided to do fifty Viking wire weave chains instead, but now I've decided to tackle the medallions as well.

Her Majesty Thora will be attending Nacht in der Stadt in Lochmere at the end of April, and I decided this would be a great opportunity to present the first set of medallions. I decided to start with the Order of the Opal.

I ordered the leather circles pre-cut from Tandy. They are two and a half inches in diameter. This was simply a matter of convenience--I could have cut circles from the sides of leather I already have, but that would be tedious at best (and likely would have resulted in medallions that were less than perfectly round).

I have a diamond-shaped leather stamp, so the tooling on these medallions turned out to be really easy in that regard. However, keeping the pattern neat and even took some trial and error. For my earliest attempts, I used graph paper to try and space out the diamonds. This resulted in a very busy medallion, more blue than white.

After five or six of these, I changed tactics. I tooled the center diamond, and then used a ruler to mark parallel lines across the circle, lined up with the edges of that central mark. I then lined the stamp up within these lines, spacing it its own width from the last diamond tooled. This was much easier to keep aligned, and resulted in fewer diamonds on the medallion overall.

After the medallions were tooled, I painted them with acrylic paint. The blue only took one coat, but the white took as many as five or six coats to completely and evenly cover the surface.

Once the painting was complete, I allowed the medallions to dry for twenty four hours. Then I dropped them one-by-one into melted beeswax and allowed them to soak for about a minute. I extracted them from the wax and immediately wiped away the excess before placing the medallion on a sheet of parchment paper to cool and harden.

I was pleased to see that after the wax was applied, the texture of the surface of the leather stood out through the paint. This was an unexpected but pleasant surprise.

After the waxed medallions cooled enough to handle them, I drilled the holes for the ring in the top of each one. I used my Dremel tool and a 3/32 bit to drill the holes.

All-in-all, I produced thirteen medallions. Twelve will be presented to Her Majesty at the end of the month. The thirteenth was an "oops"--it must not have been completely dry before I dropped it in the wax!

The rings are made from twenty-gauge, silver-enameled copper wire. The simple style is well-documented in Viking finds.










I am also presenting Her Majesty with twelve fingerloop braid cords in kingdom colors, and twelve Viking wire weave chains. These medallions could be worn suspended from either cord or chain.