Description:

Since 2013 Smith Shop has been making high quality hand forged and fabricated belt buckles. Now, for the first time, we are offering to teach you our trade craft secrets. In this weekend long workshop students will learn fundamental jewelry fabrication techniques including sawing, filing, sanding, soldering, riveting and finishing as they make heel-style belt buckles in copper or brass. Students will also learn basic leather working techniques as they cut and form the veggie tan leather for their belts. Students will each go home with a functional handmade leather belt that will last a lifetime.

Limit 10 students. Cost: $575, materials included. Additional material options available for an extra fee.

Schedule:

Saturday + Sunday, April 18 +19, 2026, 9:00am - 3:30pm

Location:

Smith Shop, 180 Victor St, Highland Park, MI 48203

Instructor Biography:

Amy Weiks is Co-owner and Co-founder of Smith Shop. She began her art career as a photographer before studying printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow, Scotland. She discovered metalsmithing in 2004 and has been a practicing metalsmith since. Amy’s innate sense of form and composition along with her detail oriented nature help drive Smith Shop’s exacting standards of quality. Amy has shown her artwork nationally and internationally including exhibitions at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Houston, TX, The Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, WA, and Galerie Marzee in Nijmegen, Netherlands. In 2013 Weiks had a solo exhibition at Velvet da Vinci, a noted jewelry gallery in San Francisco, CA. She received her BFA from Western Michigan University her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.