Using the Veiner

One of the leather stamps that I have used a lot over the years is the veiner. I have more of them than I need and they range in sizes and design. I would have to say that my favorite veiners are the ones that are serrated or scalloped on the bottom edge of the curve. That being said, there are some of the scalloped veiners that I am not enamored with either. I find that some of them are harder to incorporate into my patterns or the way in which I would like to stamp the pattern.

As I said, I have more veiners than I need. Some of them I acquired by trade or because I let someone talk me into buying them because it was what was used in the original pattern. It is nice to have the different stamps because they do come in handy once in a great while. To show you all of the veiners and extra stamps that I have in my stash would take a long time and a lot of photography. Let us just say that I have three wooden racks that are mostly filled, with one plastic rack with a few stamps that I acquired by trading. The last count for me was seventy stamps and that did not include my last trade from a few years ago. You know if I went a yard or garage sale, I would probably buy more stamps if they were something that I did not have or if they were a good quality stamp

Now to get back on track, the veiner can be used in much the same as a camouflage stamp. A veiner makes a good stop for flower petals or on leaf segments as shown in the photo displayed below. When I use a veiner as a stop on a flower petal, I like to make the line being carved towards the center of the flower a little shorter than normal. That will allow me to place the point and the curved edge of the stamp more accurately. Looking at this photo you will see that the inside or concave edge of the stamp is right next to the line and that the tip of the stamp extends a short distance from the end of the carved line. If I were going to stamp the line between the left petal and the top-center petal, I would seek to make the lines appear to be the same length to give the design a little more conformity.

Veiner used as a line stop between top and right flower petal

The only one line on this flower that has the veiner used as a stop is the “complete” line between the top-center petal and the petal on the right. The other lines are left plain for the demonstration of this use of the veiner. Normal practice for me would be stamp the center of the flower with either the seeder stamp or the one that I generally use on this particular pattern. I do not have an example of this stamp to show you because I want to keep things simple at this point and I do not want you to run out and purchase many extra leather stamps that you might not ever use.

The other thing that I would like you to notice in the previous photo is the radiating, light veiner impressions on the leftmost and the upper petals. It might be difficult to see the individual impressions but I wanted to give you an example of this use. This is not the best example that I might have to show you for this usage but it is what I completed. The way I like to do this is to use my pear shader on the petals and then follow up with the veiner tapping it lightly a couple of times and then just taper it off to nothing. On most flowers, I start toward the center and move to the outside with ever decreasing the strength with each tap of the stamp. Depending upon the size of the flower being stamped, I will use between three and six impressions of the stamp on a petal. A lot of it depends on the mood I am in and what I think will look the best on the flower. It also depends a lot on what I think looks the best from previous experience. In other words, practice!

One of the most common uses for a veiner stamp is to add texture to the center of a leaf in a very similar manner to that of the camouflage stamp. I would have to say that if you looked at the two stamps together you might consider the veiner a stretched out camouflage stamp or maybe just the opposite, the camouflage stamp is a scrunched up veiner. No matter how you look at them, they are both very important to the finishing of a hand-tooled project. I like the way that both of these stamps add their special texture to the design.

The photo below shows how the veiner has been used to represent the stamping on the center of a leaf. When I do this, I like to bevel the side of the line that the veiner will be used on, especially if I am trying to get the effect on the other side that the center of the leaf as if it were curled up a little. I used to bevel both sides of the center line on the leaves but I decided either that I liked it with just one side done or because I got too lazy to bevel the other side and thought it looked okay. 

Veiner use on leaf center line

When you look at the line in the photo above, you will noticed that it is curved. At the bottom of the line, the first stamp is at an angle of just a little less than ninety degrees to the left from it. As I stamped each impression, I twisted the stamp a little to give it a sharper angle towards the line. I also tilted the stamp toward the line so that I would get only half of the stamp to be visible. I will admit that I do see a bit of a glitch on this sample that I prepared for this blog post. I did not keep the spacing equal between the stamps and if I wanted to nitpick about it, I probably did not get the angles of the stamps all properly incremented either.

Another element of many leather patterns is the whorl. This name more or less indicates that an object, whether it be plant or animal, is in somewhat of a spiral. An example of an animal that would have a reasonable facsimile would be the curled shell of a snail. In other words, it is coiled or appears to be coiled.

The photo below shows a whorl that has been stamped with the veiner only. Notice that the veiner is used on the outer edge of the whorl. The first stamp impression is a little less than a ninety-degree angle to the edge. Each succeeding stamp is placed at a little sharper angle to the edge of the whorl. Done properly, the whorl can be an attractive addition to a pattern. By the way, this one is not perfect and I will explain why below the photo.

Veiner used to add texture to a whorl

In looking at the way I stamped the whorl, I probably would have done it a little differently. I like to start at the bottom and work my way around closer to the center. I probably should have started the stamp a little farther up on the edge from where the first one was placed. I also did not go far enough around the top portion of the whorl because I let the angle of the stamp get too flat too soon. I believe that this bit of a pattern would look much better if I had been able to go farther around the whorl.

Even though I made a mistake that is noticeable to me, others might not see it. I am like most people; I am my own worst critic. One thing that I can say that I did right on this one is that I have the point of the veiner lined up with the edge of the whorl. It is my opinion that this the proper way to stamp the whorl. I have seen some designs where the artist has put the point to the inside of the spiral.

One more thing about the whorl in the photo shown above: I would probably use decorative cuts to make this whorl look as if it had it been planned that way. In other words, I would use the art of deception to make it look better. Truthfully, covering my mistakes to make them look as if they were a part of the design comes naturally for me now. I do not think that it is cheating or dishonest because it is the artist’s choice to finish the design in his or her way.

One last photo below shows one way that a veiner can be used to create a pattern on leather. It is very simple to do and in the right place, it can be very eye pleasing. Sometime you might find that you would like to put a border on a project on which you used a stamp such as the basket weave. The veiner may be valuable in this usage as well. No matter what kind of a leather pattern you are working on, it is a good idea to practice how you are going to stamp a particular portion of a pattern.

Veiner used to create a pattern or design

Remember; let me know if you have any questions or comments. I am more than happy to be of assistance if I can.

Have fun!