Leather Painting and protecting projects

[BareBonesRescue]

I am new to leather crafting and have slowly started to learn tips and tricks for painting my projects. I recently made my own Fire Fighter Shield, and this time I used Angelus Leather paint with an airbrush to do the Black top coat and needle and bottle to fill the banners and letters. After that, I then sealed with Acrylic Resoline 50/50 with water with multiple light coats using my airbrush for protection. I am wondering, with making shields or leather projects in general, how do you protect the paint or projects from wear and tear? With my fire shield example, due to the job and hazardous environments we work in, it will take some heat and abrasions during use, but are there any ways to better prep or protect the final product? I know it was recommended for my Black Shield to use pro dye instead of painting for better durability, but if I were to make a shield that needs to be White, what would be the best way to protect the paint due to no White leather dyes existing to my knowledge? I really enjoyed making and designing my fire shield and would like to be able to make shileds for other co-workers, like my captain, whose shield would need to be white, and my Engineers, who would need to be red. Eventually, I want to add some texture to my shields and tool in some of the background/ deadspace, but I am still super new to tooling and would have trouble knowing where to start with that. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to learning and growing my leatherworking skills and abilities. 

[chuck123wapati]

You did great man That is a good first start. I would try dip dyeing the leather black to start out; it won't scratch off, so half the battle is won. Have you searched the forum for these? I know I have seen a couple of threads on the subject.

[fredk]

As chuck says, dye the piece black first. Some like to dye it dark blue then black to give a deep black. I don't use Angelus paints. I use hobby paints meant for plastic models. There's a greater range and they work dead on as well as being cheaper.

Johnston's Mop and Glo or whatever its called now, is a water-thin acrylic varnish. A couple of coats of that should give good protection

This was a knife sheath I made and painted, it received no over-coating protective layer. It was painted with afore mentioned model paints

after several years of use, about 10, it was returned to me for re-painting