Happy Holidays!

Better late than never? Hey, I've been busy! Hope you all had a merry Christmas, and lots of fun with friends and family. 

Laced Bondage Belt Step-by-Step

Today I'm going to take you through my process for making a heavy, wide laced bondage belt with d-ring attachment points. It's pretty much the same design I did for Straitjacketed.com a few weeks ago (as seen here and here), with slight tweaks to the shape of the panels. The one for SJ.com had curves, but this time I wanted to make the curves even more prominent and exaggerated. I'm hoping this gets used by Karen for her Black Cherries series, paired with a square armbinder and the recently completed pony hood. 

I did want to keep the 2 side d-rings (from the SJ.com version) and make the front a larger O-ring. 

Start off by tracing the patten onto the leather. This is a heavy black cowhide, about 3oz weight and 1.5 to 1.8mm thick. 

Clip and sew the panel sections together. 

Glue along the edge seams and seam allowances. 

Also, apply glue to your boning. In this case I'm using a Rigilene polyester boning - it's not the heaviest stuff, but it should work fine for this project. 

You want boning on either side of every seam and at the ends which will become the rear opening. 

Topstitch from the good side through the front, boning and seam allowance. 

Now I trim off the extra seam allowance on the top and bottom (along the green line in the above image). 

Next, we want to work on the lining. I usually have a supply of scraps from the neck or belly area of previously-used hides. These areas have more scars, defects and stretch marks generally, and therefore are better used in parts of your projects that won't be visible. I create an outline that is slightly larger than the workpiece, so I have room to adjust when the two parts are glued together. 

With the rough-cut complete, I'm ready to break out the glue. 

Apply glue to the rear of both the belt and the lining. 

Once the glue has set up, position the belt on the lining. Use a mallet all over to secure the two pieces together. 

Next, trim off the excess lining

At this point, I skive the edges to keep the rolled edge from becoming too thick. 

For the rolled edge, I cut two 1.75" wide strips long enough to extend beyond the top and bottom edges by an inch or so. These strips are about 28" long for this belt. 

Clip them in place with good side of the edge strip facing the good side of the belt, with 1" overlap. 

Sew along the edge, about 1/8 inch or so from the edge. 

Apply glue to the front and rear edges, about 1/8 inch beyond your stitch line on the inside. 

Trim, tuck and fold the rolled edge around from front to back. 

Topstitch along the rolled edge to keep it in place. 

Mark the spacing for your lacing holes, punch holes and set your grommets. 

On this design I stitch a tongue in place so you can't see skin through the lacing opening. 

We're now ready to attach the D-rings. I make my own hardware connections from 6-7oz vegetable tanned leather. I start by cutting 1.25" strips using a craft knife and a metal ruler. 

I use both a 1.5 inch and 1-inch punch to create the tab shape. 

First I use the 1.5-inch round-end punch to round the ends cutting the pieces to 2.625-inches in length. 

I use a little stitching groover tool to create a shadow line. 

When I'm making a bunch of small parts like this that I want to be the same, I usually will create a template out of posterboard - this one (the silver rectangle on the left below) will help me position the holes for all the parts in the correct position. 

After punching the holes, I use the 1-inch strap-end punch to create a curved "waist" on the sides of each piece. This will allow the d-ring to lay more flat than it would otherwise. 

I dip the pieces in water briefly to mold them into shape around the D-ring. It just takes a few seconds of submersion to make them a lot more pliable than they would be otherwise. 

The leather dye I use doesn't require the piece to be dry, so once they're formed I can start applying the dye right away. I usually do 3 coats, waiting about 10 minutes in between each coat. 

Once they dry, you buff them to a shine with a smooth cloth. Now they're ready to be attached. 

Position the D- and O-rings where you want them. Mark the locations with a pen through the holes...

And set the hardware in place with rivets. 

Now just lace her up, and she's ready to go!

Thanks for watching...

Strappy hood and body piece

Just wrapped up a couple of new pieces for Karen Hsiao to shoot for her Black Cherries series. These were a total departure from my typical working method, being composed completely of vinyl straps. There was no pattern in the traditional sense, just a series of straps joined together one piece at a time. 

In order to keep the lines of the straps parallel on the hood, I had to actually make some of the straps out of curved pieces. Some of the curves were counterintuitive, and I ended up having to experiment to get the shape right. 

The body was challenging as well - each strap had to be a unique length, and I had to calculate the center, front dimension, rear dimension and front divided in half for each strap to position it correctly. 

With all the hours of careful measuring, cutting and assembly, the end result looks surprisingly simple and clean...

Asylum Hood - Pics by Karen Hsiao

I am loving these shots Karen sent over of the asylum hood on Ginger... Thanks to both of them for letting me share. 

Fetish Inspiration - Centurians Whole Catalog of the Exotic and Bizarre

Once upon a time there was a young little pervert living in New Orleans who had an intense curiosity about anything kinky, but not much information (yes, I'm talking about myself). I didn't know anything at the time about bondage, domination or the world of S&M, but I knew there were certain things that were dark and perverted that people didn't discuss in public, and I was intensely interested in the subject. I would see something on TV, like Batman getting tied up and it would give me a funny feeling inside. Before long I figured out I wasn't like other people I knew, and I thought maybe something was wrong with me. 

Just a side note for all you young ones out there: this was long, long time ago, before the age of the ubiquitous internet, when any deviation you can think of (and a few more you can't) is just a Google search away. It was actually difficult to find out information about certain subjects back in those days... The pre-internet dark ages. 

When I did come across a depiction of a kinky person in a movie or on TV, it was usually a bad thing: someone was getting tied up just before being killed or kidnapped - pretty negative stuff. I started doing research and trying to find out more. I tried to get my hands on anything that I could. In some movie special-effects magazine I came across an advertisement for a catalog for Centurians. I sent off my $20 and waited a few weeks. When the catalog arrived in the mail, I could hardly believe my eyes. It was like a candy store for me, just filled with hundreds of kinky items - many of which I'd never seen before. It was so eye opening to see that there were other people out there who liked the things I did, and enough of them that there was a business and a catalog full of stuff made for them. I can't describe the world of wonder and how it felt to see these creations for the first time: the bondage hood, with open mouth. The armbinder, the sleepsack, harnesses, gags, cuffs. I had found my people. 

The catalog cover had this long list of contents, which I pored over time and again. I didn't know what any of that stuff was at first, but it seemed to suggest endless possibilities.  

This bondage hood shot, with the mouth only opening and collar with the chain coming off the top of the hood - it's still has such power for me all these years later. Plus, you can see the straps on her shoulders which most likely connect to a tight armbinder. 

Speaking of which, another all-time favorite image for me is this zipped armbinder with 3 straps. Another picture I must have stared at for hours. 

There were so many incredible devices, and the illustrations were beautiful. 

Next I bought a copy of the Latex Annual catalog, which followed that same "shopping list of your dreams" content on the front cover. 

The models seemed to inhabit some fantasy world of perversion made real: flesh and blood plus rubber and fur. I totally understood why Sorayama would take inspiration from this model and pose years later.

This was my first encounter with the idea of a sleepsack - a life-changing experience for me. I loved everything about it, and could only imagine what it might feel like to be inside. It was so sexy to me. I couldn't believe other people had actually made these things. This is still such a hot picture!

As if the idea of a latex full-coverage suit wasn't enough, how about one that inflates? It was a whole new world. 

I couldn't really afford many of the things in the catalog, but it set my mind free in a way to enjoy the fantasies that I had always had. It was knowing that I wasn't alone that was the most valuable things I got from the catalogs. 

A few years later I managed to get some back issues that I hadn't the chance to get previously, including one catalog focused just on black patent leather. The sack pictured on the front cover was another one of those "I can't believe that is real" kind of images. 

The cover image is so inspiring to me, I hope to make some things for this show in Japan that embody that mixture of creativity, kink and mysterious eroticism that the Centurians catalog held for me. Somewhere out there is a young pervert that I hope will say to himself: "I see something familiar in that piece. That means something to me. It's strange, dark, mysterious and beautiful, and I want one."