I love the look of a leather bracket shelf, we’ve put one up in our youngest daughter’s room and our downstairs loo! They are a nice, quick and really quite easy DIY ( I say that, the husband made them, not me, but it looked pretty easy) and they add a unique, light and modern, scandi vibe to the room. Plus any extra shelves to faff with are always a good idea right?
What you’ll need:
- 2 leather straps – I brought mine from Etsy here and went for the 190cm long x 50mm width in natural leather which came out at around £20.
- A shelf of your choice – I went for this one here from B & Q with a 80cm length and 2cm thickness. £8
- 4 x Dome head mirror screws – I brought mine from Amazon here for around £4 for 10.
- Leather hold punch like this one here – not essential, you could just screw straight through the leather but this make it a little easier and neater.
- Wall Fixings
- Screwdrivers
- Ruler or straight edge
Step 1
Cut you leather straps to length. For this tutorial I’m going to show the measurements needed for an 80cm long, 2cm thick shelf but you can make the brackets to fit any length or depth of shelf, you will just need to adjust your strap length accordingly.
To make the brackets to fit this exact size shelf above: – Using a very sharp stanley knife you will need to cut two strips of leather measuring 71cm each.
Step 2
Next, take a pen or pencil and mark out 2cm from the top of each strap. Then add another mark at 18cm from the top and then finally 2cm up from the bottom of the strap.
Next mark out the middle of the width of each strap (from left to right) We are using 5cm wide straps so the centre point is 2.5cm. Place a mark at 2.5cm on top of the three marks you’ve already made.
Step 4
Take your hole punch (if you don’t have one you could drill a hole instead – sounds extreme but it’s really thick and tough leather) and very carefully, ensuring you have the punch directly over the marks you have made, clamp the punch together and wiggle until you have made your hole. Repeat this on all of the 3 marks you have made on each strap.
Step 5
Next step is to mark out where you want the shelf to go on the wall and where you will need to put your wall fixings. As ours is a new build property the walls are all plasterboard so we use self drilling plasterboard fixings. The clue is in the name I guess but just to point out, that you don’t have to drill into the wall first with these fixings – they’re a great little invention and I think every shelf in our house is held up with these. I’ll add a link to some here so that you know what they look like. If you have brick walls you will just need to use the correct Rawl plugs and fixings for your walls. Firstly hold your shelf up to the wall, roughly where you want it to go. Put a faint pencil mark on the wall that is just above the shelf and 14cm in from the right. This is where the first fixing will go.
Step 6
Once you have put the first screw through the leather and into the fixing (as shown in the picture below), make sure that the strap is perfectly vertical or plumb and then make a pencil mark through the top hole, that’s then where you need to place your second fixing (on top of your pencil mark.)
Step 7
Put your mirror screw though the hole at the bottom of the strap and then through the hole in the top of the strap.
The fixing holes for the left strap should be around 52cm apart from the right strap and perfectly level with the holes on the right strap. Use a spirit level to get this right otherwise your shelf will be wonky.
Repeat the fixing steps 6 and 7 on the left strap and that’s it your done, just slide the shelf in from the side and you’ll have something that looks like this…
I’ve also somehow managed to get ‘Mr Newbuildtohome’ to do a how to video on these which will show you step by step exactly how to make them. I’ve pasted a link to the Youtube video here
Would really LOVE to see photos if you decide to make one of these so please tag me on Instagram @newbuildtohome or send me a photo.
Thanks for reading,
Love Jo x
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