Toddo

Hers' my attempt at a faux weathered/used sports collectible item. Tooling underneath. This is like my third project. I'm getting much better at making my curved cut lines look more fluid. I've learned that you need to keep 110% focued on the FRONT of where the blade is cutting. Sounds like a no brainer.. but, I'm learning.

Beginer here, but I have a suggestion. There are products called liquid mask that you can get at art stores and hobby centers. You would paint the areas you want to block with liquid mask, then dye over the entire thing, then peel off the mask and paint your area that you protected from the dye. I have not as yet tried it but I'm working on a project that I plan on painting with acrylic paint but that I also want to dye the surrounding areas a light tan color. Some of the liquid mask products are water soluable. And some I've seen are like liquid rubber latex. I'm going to try the kind that you get at an art store. These mask products are made to apply to different substrates including porus water color paper. I figure if this stuff peels completely off of water color paper, which it would have to in order to paint back in that area, then it should work on leather that has deep groves, cuts and pits in it. I plan on putting on two or three layers to get it good and thick so to that it peels up completely. One way to check it afterwards is to take the peeled off piece and put it up to a light to see if there are any holes in it. If you google liquid mask you will see a ton of stuff on it. I saw one video of the art store liquid mask being used on a painting and then a tutorial of some hobby center liquid mask being used to paint graphics on a plastic model. Both of them look like they would work fine on a leather projects to me. It seems like liquid mask is the only solution for us people who like to paint on leather. I would deffinitely try it out on a scrap piece of leather first before you go with it. I plan on posting back a pic of my finished project when I'm done with it.

It's settled then. No dying the backround. Thanks a lot for the advice (and compliments) every one! The more information I get, the better. I actually did make a "splotchy" mess on my fist little project I did. A bookmark that I did a sheridan pattern on. I actually painted the dye on with a tiny brush in order not to get it on the tooled area. Totaly did not come out the way I wanted it to. I'm skittish on dying anything for right now.

Thanks dirtclod! I assume Tandy has got the resolene. I'll give em a call tommorrow and ask them. I guess I'm leaning more towards not dying the background because of the dark lettering. I got plenty o' time to decide.

I have this wallet I'm making for my sons birthday. I'm pretty much done with the tooling and painting. I need some advice on the finishing. Here's the wallet: Should I die the background? Obviously it would have to be a light tint of whatever color so that the dark red lettering would not get lost. The paint is just ordinary cheap acrylic paint I got at the art store. I put it on in layers. First layers watered down a lot and built from there. Then I flexed the leather while it was drying so that it would not crack after drying. It seems to have worked. I can bend it all around with no cracks. If I were to dye the background, then I would need some kind of mask product to block the dye from getting on the painted areas. What should I use if I decide to dye it? And... when dying, do you use a wide sponge brush so that it comes out even? Or just use a cloth. And do you dye it like wood? Meaning, do you make a pass with the dye, then go back and make a pass with a dry cloth to sort of even it out? Then after dying, what product should I use to seal it? I have this Eco Flo stuff that came with my sons beginner kit that's called super shene. Is that stuff compatible with the acrylic paint? I mean, what's the best thing to use so that it will be completely protected and the paint will never rub off through a lot of use? By the way, I have a beginners tip for anyone who accidently gets a dark water spot on their project. When I was painting the lettering, I got a tiny bit of paint out of the paint area (look directly under the letter K). I tried to get it up with a wet q-tip. It seemed to smear and then I tried a wet cloth. Well, let me tell you, it got out of hand big time. I then went and got a little bleach and water mixture and tried that. I finally got it to where it looked like there was no red tint on the leather anymore. But the area got soaked through with a big spot. The next day after it dryed there was a big dark spot. I was mortified. I tried to put straight bleach on it to get it out. No good. I even tried to put this product called "oops" on it to try to get the dark spot out. No go. So I called the Tandy shop near me and asked how to get rid of a dark water spot. The guy there says there's nothing you can do, once it's in there, it's in there. A lot of help that guy was. I tried to google up some answeres and the best thing I could find is that I should re-wet all the leather and then it dry. So I took the thing and just soaked it. Held it under water for like 5 minutes, the entire piece, front and back until it was completely saturated. After that, I let it sit a while and then I could still see a bit of a dark spot there. Eeek! Well then I thought I could just take off a little top leather with a piece of sand paper. Like maybe kind of errase it. It worked! I used to rough of sand paper though. I only had #100 grit paper handy. It did take the spot out though. Now it looks as though it's actually a little lighter in that area than the rest. Better than a dark spot though. I must have took off the tanage or something. I only used the sand paper when it was soaking wet. I don't know if this method would work while it is dry. So check: water spot - remove by wetting leather, then rub with find grain sandpaper until gone.

Thanks Doc! Nice to meet you.

Hello all. I just starting getting into leather working here lately, originally in an attempt to get my 12 year old son interested in it more so than anything. This past Christmas I was searching for some good gift ideas when I noticed a Tandy leather store in our area and decided to check it out. I had done a little leather working myself when I was a kid around the age of 11 and 12 years old and I thought this would be a great gift idea for him. So.. looking around at Tandy I saw one of those deluxe starter kits on sale for $100 bucks and decided to go ahead and get it for him for Christmas and see if he would develop any interest in it. I had gotten one for Christmas JUST like it when I was a kid. He's pretty much showed minimal interest in it so far. He's more interested in the Xbox 360 I'm afraid. But... when he OCCAISIONALLY gets tired of playing video games, he does tinker with it some. So on this note, I decided to go get some project material from Tandy and give it a go myself in an attempt to spark more interest in it for him. You know, to show him how amazing it is to transform a blank piece of leather into some cool looking stuff. The first thing I did was a book marker project with the sheridan design. It came out fairly well. He was DEFFINITELY impressed with that. I don't have a pic of that right now. The second thing I started working on was this wallet. His birthday is coming up in May, so I decided to make a wallet for him. So then I go to Tandy and get this wallet kit that was on sale. I got some good practice on the sheridan design on the book marker and was preparing to go with the sheridan pattern that came with the wallet when I started thinking he might not want a wallet with a floral design on it. So I started looking around for an alternate design. At first I was gonna do like a skateboard logo and then I saw one of those huge football helmet magnets on a car and thought that would be perfect for me to do. The lines are simple and not to intricate, and the colors and very simple. So I went online, got an image of the football helmet magnet and transferred it from the screen to the leather. This is what I've got so far on the wallet. Actually, I would like to ask some advice and questions about what I should do next with this.