I have a habit of buying beautiful, old tooled leather purses that hold up beautifully with time but their straps deteriorate rather quickly. I went searching on the internet for a strap replacement I'd feel good about investing in and I didn't see anything I was crazy about.
here are some simple steps to make a purse/camera strap from an old leather belt. it took us about 15 minutes to make three straps. not bad.
what you'll need: (I've linked to supplies on Etsy but I purchased all of my supplies from my local fabric store. I felt good about shopping locally and I was able to buy in smaller quantities)
1. D-rings like these (make sure the flat side it wide enough to fit the width of your leather belt) or better yet something like this. we didn't think about what color D-rings to use but there are so many choices and if the belt you're using already has metal hardware you may want to choose accordingly.
2. an old leather belt (we removed the metal portion of the belt closure/buckle with a pair of pliers)
3. hammer
4. rivet kit like this (it comes with a tiny anvil (small round metal circle in upper right hand corner), a rivet setting tool (metal rod in upper right hand corner), rivet caps and pins, and a set of instructions. we used my giant anvil instead. just a note: search for 'rivets' under 'supplies' on etsy and you'll find super fancy rivets with spikes, rhinestones, etc.
5. leather punch (lower left) like this one
step 1:
mark with a sharpie where you'd like to create a hole for the rivet. you'll need to make two marks on each end of the belt. you'll want to be able to fold the leather over onto itself (making a loop) and fit the rivet through a hole that goes through two layers of belt (this is shown in step 3)
step 2: (not shown) punch holes with your leather punch -- make sure that the hole you punch is the same diameter as the rivet you'll be fitting into the hole. you want it to fit snugly. might be useful to have a screwdriver nearby so you can adjust the leather hole punch to the appropriate size
step 3: fit the rivet pin (bottom side of the rivet) through the holes with the D-ring already placed inside of the leather loop
step 4: place the rivet cap (top portion of rivet) onto the rivet pin
step 5:
hammer rivet cap onto rivet pin (the photo shown is without using the rivet setting tool. you should really use the rivet setting tool because it will prevent the rivet cap from dimpling under the pressure of the hammer head.) place the rivet setting tool on top of the rivet cap and hammer the end of the rivet setting tool. don't worry, the tiny instructions in your rivet kit will walk you through this
step 6: ta-da! well, almost ta-da. I used D-rings without carabiners so I'll have to use something like this to link the D-rings on my strap to the D-rings on my purse. I've shown my favorite of the three straps we made in 15 minutes. there was a learning curve. this was the last one we made and the rivets were centered nicely, we used the rivet setting tool to prevent dimpling of the metal, and I'm excited to have a beaded purse strap.
