MAKE: MY FIRST KOMBUCHA WALLET

I have been drinking kombucha for 5 or 6 years, but I recently heard that you can use the "mother" culture to make kombucha leather.

The amazing thing about growing your own leather is there is no cow slaughter involved. You grow your materials in the privacy of your own home for the affordable price of nearly free. You do have to use cider vinegar sugar tea water and a mother scoby. I already had most of these items.

SCOBY stands for symbiotic culture of yeasts and bacteria. It is the source, hence the nickname mother, of all kombucha brews. This drink supposedly helps with digestion, detoxification, and energy among other benefits.

Before I get into the wallet construction, I'll share a link to a modified recipe that makes this possible. I will not walk through the recipe, but I will say you want your raw scoby to be at least a quarter inch thick before taking it out to dry.

Here is the scoby after 3 weeks in a 13" x 9" glass container.

Here are a couple shots after the scoby has dried. At this point I can call this material leather.

I found a decent design from The Art Of Manliness blog and I've included the results of each step.

Notes:

• It is important to make sure the D section is as wide and as high as a wallet you currently use. I didn't check and ended up with a wallet half the size I wanted.

• A winemaker friend told me to save the scraps and test different natural dies to have a set of samples.

• The leather is slightly less sticky than bees wax. It would be nice to pair this leather with something equivalent to suede.