Hand-making my camera strap with Elizabeth Dunn

As my regular readers will know I love to support British businesses, especially when they are small, unique and exquisite. That's the camp that Elizabeth Dunn falls into. She makes beautiful bags, wallets, journals, shoes and camera straps from leather.

Elizabeth invited a couple of my blogging friends and me to make our own camera straps. Which  was perfect timing for me, as I got a camera recently for my birthday, and the standard Canon strap it came with is frankly a bit boring - so I jumped at the chance. 

We arrived in a little back street a short distance from Holborn in London, having made are various journeys from home leaving the kids well cared for by dads or grandparents. We were faced with a big building of lots of little studios. I love buildings like this and luckily for me London has a plethora of characterful buildings for me delight over. 

We went up to the studio in an ancient looking lift, feeling a little apprehensive.

We needn't have felt anxious at all, the lift took us safely to our destination and Elizabeth has a great knack of making you feel welcome and comfortable. She is a brilliant teacher, and nothing is too much trouble even if like me you keep making mistakes. 

There was a great array of leathers in all different colours and thicknesses to choose from. And that was the toughest bit choosing which leather and then accessories to make my handmade uniquely bespoke camera strap from.

Hard at work with the very lovely Carissa from Little likely Lads and Katy from Modern Mummy.

In the end I went for a multicoloured number of purple, turquoise and mock croc grey with gold and silver accessories, clearly Elizabeth's warning of less is more fell on deaf ears with me. The others made really lovely, elegant looking camera straps, but I liked mine, it represented my scatty personality well. 

Hard at work.

Here's my masterpiece. I'd made a couple of mistake when stamping the letters, but I decided to leave it as I kind of liked it looking not perfect. 

All of us feeling very pleased with our creations. 

The extremely talented Elizabeth Dunn and me.

Elizabeth offers handmade camera straps on her website from £85 www.elizabethdunn.co.uk  To discuss having a bespoke one made or to enquire about workshops please contact her directly: elizabethdunnfootwear@gmail.com

What do you think of my creation? 

Nat x

Disclaimer: Elizabeth kindly invited us to make these camera straps in return for press coverage.