This is a little project that I’ve wanted to do for a really long time… however, up until recently, my husband and I shared our DSLR camera, and I guess he didn’t think a peach coloured leather camera strap was I cool as I did (pffftttt!). However, being the awesome photographer that he is, he has been doing some more ‘serious’ photo shoots lately, and so decided to upgrade to a much more fancy-schmancy DSLR… which means I can officially call the lovely D7000 MINE! And within a week, it was sporting an adorable new strap :)

Here’s how I made it… it’s surprisingly easy. I love working with leather – it’s soft (well, can be), durable, easy to work with, and often requires little to no sewing. You’ll need:

• a long strip / large piece of leather (OR, you could sew several small pieces together)
• scissors
• ruler
• cutting board / surface
• blade / knife
• 2 grommets
• setting tool for grommets
• 2 clip-rings

I started by removing the old strap, and used it as a guide for the length of the strip of leather.

Once I had the rough-cut strip of leather, I used a ruler and pen to mark the actual strap width onto the back of the leather strip. I decided on a 5 cm width – slightly wider than the original strap.

To make the final cuts for the strap, I held the ruler firmly in place along the line I had drawn, and used a blade. Scissors were fine for the rough cuts, but I wanted the final cuts to be really precise and perfectly straight.

Then I used the ruler and blade to taper the ends of the strap (just aesthetics!), and left a small tab on each end that could be folded back onto the strap so that the leather would be double-thick at the point of the connection to the camera.

Next, I folded that tab over, and used the blade to made a tiny hole through both layers of the leather.

Finally, I fit a grommet through the holes, and used a setting tool to secure the grommet in place.

That’s it for the strap! I just used two clip-rings to attach the camera to the strap.

Voila! I love it – functional and adorable.