Let It Shine Enrichment Academy × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Let It Shine Enrichment Academy lives at Bethany Lutheran on Slaughter Lane in South Austin, and it takes children as they come – ages three to six and of every ability, spirited personalities very much included. The classrooms are built to mean it: swings and weighted lap pads for the bodies that need them, and ratios small enough that a teacher can actually notice things.
Teresa Danner carried the idea with her when her family moved to Austin. She is an occupational therapist, and she designed the program out of that experience, then found in Bethany Lutheran a church willing to share the dream; the doors opened around 2017 and demand has kept growing. More than a preschool, they like to say. A community. We spent a while in their world putting this study together, and we are inclined to agree.
The mark, as found
Pressed
The lockup runs wide, so it runs the long way – lengthwise tags, the sun riding the strap line. Golden tan arizona and dusty lavender lilac carry it as a blind press, the leather's own shadow doing the lettering. The true black tag takes the gold foil; a school named for shining should have at least one place where it literally does.
Twelve ways to shine
The school's vision speaks of honoring each child's unique gifts and challenges, and we wanted a die that makes the same promise in geometry. One sun with twelve rays, every ray drawn its own way. One ray waves and another zigzags; one is a chain of small beads, and one forks like a young branch. All of them belong to the same circle of light, and the words beneath are the school's own.
The emblem is compact, so it travels. On the toiletry bags it sits as a maker's mark in the lower right corner, golden tan arizona stacked over deep dark espresso.
The keychain pair gives the true black fob a gold press – the second place this study lets the shine turn literal – and the dusty lavender fob a blind one.
The journals pair dusty lavender with a honeyed russet that renders warm amber in most light, the sun pressed generously into the corner of the cover, right where a teacher's thumb will find it.
The line the name sings
Say the school's name to anyone who grew up near a pew and a tune arrives on its own: this little light of mine. So the tray die is a small candle under a chapel arch, with the refrain lettered three times, each line larger than the one before, the way the song swells once a room stops being shy about it. Pressed deep into the golden tan of the arizona tray, it becomes the dish by the door where keys land at the end of a teaching day.
We made this out of love. Leatherius Woodman is on a mission to create and share artifacts of beauty, craft and love – this study is one of them, and we hope the feeling is mutual. Every image is a render – how we prototype before cutting a die.
If you're Let It Shine Enrichment Academy and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.