Justinicus

I also have no experience but a couple ideas. If you're not looking for "production" output, you might try a hybrid hand-painting method. Print out the design on a film, stylus (yes, that's a verb now) it into cased leather, then dye the design in with a brush (or more likely several brushes of varying sizes). Some DIYers do this with t-shirts and textile ink rather than just building a frame and buying photo-resist. I would also probably try proper silk-screening. As Sylvia said, the inks used for screen printing are really more like a paste. Leather dye might need some sort of thickener to keep it from flowing under the screen, feathering and/or smearing the image. I have essentially no experience at all with leather dying (just tried dying and burnishing my first edge last night -- only to figure out it was chrome-tanned leather!), so I don't know if a thickened dye would still be able to penetrate the surface and such, but I don't see the harm in experimentation!

Sorry to derail (though not sorry enough to not do it!), but I have to ask, where can one find scraps for $1/lb? Tandy sells "tooling leather remnants" at $10/lb, theleatherguy sells tooling scrap at $11/2lbs, and Springfield Leather has it at $8/2lbs. That's the cheapest I've ever seen!

I might be missing something in your post, but what should I be reading? Also, veg-tanned, according to the seller. Thanks for the response

Bump? Anybody? Can anyone at least tell me if their splits come soft like suede or not? Thanks!

I purchased a set of split scraps a while back, thinking that I could use them for practice/mockup/lining. The pieces I received were mostly rather stiff, and often with a scratchy surface, almost sandpapery. Did I get a bad batch, or is this normal? I always thought split leather was supposed to be soft... Suede. Is there a way to soften hard, scratchy splits? I'm a complete newbie, so please assume I know nothing; the extent of my leatherworking knowledge (all self-taught) is how to use an Xacto and a sewing awl. Thanks!