A well spent day making a leather bag!

So today I’m finally back in Jakarta (even if it’s only for 1-2 days lol) and I was invited to join an extremely interesting event for Axe Indonesia's series of program: #AxelerationProject. It involved three different activities held on the same day at different venues: film, coffee and leather crafting. I chose to participate in the leather crafting.

 

This wasn’t my first time crafting leather, I took a leather crafting class before but it was only to make name card holders; this time the leather crafting class took place in an Indoestri in a land far, far away in West Jakarta. So off I went with a couple of #Axelerate buddies, Keenan pearce  and Leonard Theosabrata.

Leonard Theosabrata

Keenan pearce

The class started around 10am and the whole experience was quite exciting for me, notably exchanging ideas with other participants with their colourful fields of work whilst making a leather bag from scratch. As it turns out, it’s not that easy to make a bag. It wasn’t even a big bag… it was kinda small haha. 

 

So from the beginning we were all instructed on how to shape a bag: the leather is soaked in water, dried, then shaped, then cut, glued, cut again, sewn, man there are so many steps. It was quite a long process in crafting where you need consistency, patience, precision… so many skills are required to make one piece of leather artwork. They taught us skills that I think can be applied in our daily life, at our work place, everything requires some form of sacrifice and if we make something with our own two hands, that proud feeling you get when you accomplish it, you tend to appreciate the resulting work. It’s important to enjoy the process because in the end, the result isn’t everything but the journey to get to that end? Now that decides everythin'.
   

Long story short, eventually all the participants succeeded in making their own bag and were proud with their own handicraft. Although you could say they were far from perfect, but yeah, we learned something new today and the fun day ended with a nice dinner together at Artotel Jakarta along with the other participants from the coffee and film classes. A very well spent day indeed, thanks to Axe Indonesia for inviting me to join in on the fun program. The point you should take from this story is to enjoy the journey towards the result and remember, no result will betray your efforts. 

Anyway you can check out the #Axelerate web series here.

Cheers,

Febrian

Translated by Achmad Sirman