pattyharrington

Thanks for your reply! Both of your suggestions seemed to be what I was doing wrong, but after some trial and error, and some touching up, I finished with a moderate degree of satisfaction.

I actually just dampened the piece first and mistakenly referred to that as casing. After reading many board posts, I think I probably should have thinned the dye a bit and perhaps dampened the leather with alcohol rather than water. What's interesting is as it dried, much of the detail of the pyrography came back, not all, but enough. After totally dry I was able to go over the parts that were really faded with my burner and it worked fine. I still am unhappy with the finish and have already completed a seat for my tripod stool (not burned or embellished, just functional) so I won't be using it for the original project, but will use it for something else down the road, perhaps after figuring out how to improve the look of the dye job. Thanks everyone for your help!!

I recently, painstakingly, burned a design into a stool seat I was making. It was my first project using my wood burner on leather and the results were fantastic..... At first that is. When it was complete I cased it then attempted to dye it. I used feiblings leather dye (the kind available at Michaels) and it was splotchy and streaky. I tried to fix but it was a lost cause. What's worse is the design almost DISAPPEARED and although the lines of the design can be seen, the dark burn marks now look like scratches and are lighter than the dye. What did I do wrong?