Leather Bottle or Can Belt Holster

Be it at a festival, barbecue or just walking around with friends, we often find ourselves with an open bottle or can in our hands, that we can't easily set down or put in a bag. This fun little accessory is easy to make and lets you keep your hands free without spilling anything, while always keeping your drink in within hand's reach.

It's a small project for half an evening and lets you get started working with leather without having to get any specialized tools, so I would recommend it for any beginner.

The leather straps in this tutorial are sized to be 1.5cm wide. This can be done with different sizes, though going bigger might look very chunky and going smaller might end up a bit more flimsy. For the thickness I chose 2mm, but this too can be adapted to almost anything.

Needed:

• 1 ~45cm long strip of leather
• 1 ~40cm long strip of leather
• 2 ~25cm long strips of leather
• a sharp utility knife
• 11 rivets
• a hole punch sized for the rivets (punch pliers)
• something to set the rivets with (hammer)
• measuring tape or a ruler

Optional:

• an edge beveler or sandpaper
• beeswax
• a wood slicker or piece of canvas

On vegetable tanned leather, the edges can be burnished. This is optional, but will give them a nice smooth feel. This is done in multiple steps. First, one would take off a bit of the edges to round them over. In leatherwork, this is usually done with an edge beveler like this, which glides over the edge and cuts a bit of it as seen in the first picture.

Alternatively, sandpaper can also be used. For this, lay the strap flat against the edge of a table and sand diagonally towards the floor. do this on both sides until the edge feels slightly rounded over After this, slightly wet the whole edge. This can be done with a sponge or with the fingers. Just don't hold the whole piece under a faucet. Now the edge can be slicked, either with a wood slicker or a piece of canvas. The important factor here is friction, not pressure, so just slide it along the edge quickly for a few seconds. The result should look similar to the second picture.

Lastly, rub the beeswax along the edge and polish it again. Now it should feel very smooth and shiny, like in the third picture.

Use one of the two short pieces of leather to measure around the bottle or can that you want to size your holster for.

Leave a bit of slack, so you can easily slide the bottle in and out, but not too much, so that it still sits snugly, like shown in picture 1.

Mark where the strap meets up, add around 1,5cm and cut off the strap here. Transfer this measurement to the second loop and cut off here.

Now mark the middle of the straps around 0.7cm away from each end. Punch holes here and rivet the straps together as two loops, with the rough side facing inward:

Next we take the longest piece of leather and the belt we want this to fit on. While we can always go a few sizes bigger, the better it fits, the less it will dangle.

For this, take one end of the strap and lay it around the belt. Go around 1.5cm over it and loop together like shown in the first picture, then mark it on both sides like the second.

Here we also go around 0.7cm in and mark the holes, punch them and set the rivet with the rough side of the leather inward, as in the last picture.

First let's mark the position of the first ring around 2cm under the belt loop. This ring will sit high enough to prevent whatever you hold in it from tipping over, so on a can it would sit just below the rim, on a bottle just under where the neck begins. (Picture 1)

Place the strap like that against your container (Picture 2) and then mark where the second ring should go. Don't place it completely on the bottom, 1/3 the way up would be a good choice. (Picture 3)

Roughly measure out what the distance between the lower ring on this side and the lower ring on the other side would be if the strap were to go around the bottle like in picture 4)

This distance should roughly be: distance of the ring to the bottom x 2 + diameter of the bottom

Then mark this point on the strap.

Next measure the distance between the upper and lower strap and also apply this on the other side as in picture 5. Cut the strap off 1cm above this mark.

Lastly, take the last strap of leather and line it up with the other one on the side without the belt loop. Transfer the 4 marks over and cut off the strap 1cm over the last mark like in picture 6.

Punch the 8 holes for this as shown in picture 7.

Take the strap with the belt loop on it and measure the middle point between the two holes for the lower ring.

Make two cuts, 0.5cm away from each edge, 1.5cm in each direction. They should total to 3cm and look like in the first picture.

Now you should be able to weave the second strap through like in the second picture.

Fold the rings in half like in the first picture. Be careful to keep the rivet out of the center here, since we will need to punch a hole here later.

Then mark the folds as shown in the second picture and punch holes there.

Put those holes over each other and do the same with the folds that happen now, like in the third picture.

This way you get 4 roughly evenly spaced holes around the rings without doing any math.

For this I would start by riveting the rings to one side of the longest strap as in the first picture.

Then loop around and attach them to the other side as in the second picture.

Weave the other strap through the bottom as shown before and attach it too on both sides.

Now you're already done! Slide in your container, to see how well it fits.

Now you're done! Put it on, check how it fits and show it off!