@sunevarbil: I decided to whip up a custom bag for myself a week or so before my family vacation to Maine. I love fall and this was a vacation for my birthday as well, so it was very natural for me to want to created a fall foliage bag. This leather bag came to me an awful conditions. It smelled highly of smoke and I ended up having to wash it three different times to get the stains out of it. The first wash was a swedish bath (or wash). Basically you can take a cleaner that is friendly for leather items and mix it with water and allow your leather item to soak for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. Everybody’s got different techniques on a Swedish bath I feel. Anyways, I had to clean it again as the interior was especially messy. You can see that on the towel how much of the grime and dirt bled into the towel. I also let it dry in the sun. I would not recommend this with suede or anything that you want to keep the original color, but I was hoping that it would drive faster. Overall, it took about two days to really dry. Then I made some custom dyes and custom paints and I just sort of went at the bag with an idea. I freehand painted the leaves but you can use waht you want. I didn’t actually finish the bag as much as I wanted to before our trip, but it looked good enough to me and I really wanted to use it for my trip. I’ve got a little bit left detailing for it, but that will happen later. It was a lot of fun to bring on my trip and the dye never came off on my white T-shirt (probably because I really worked to deglaze it well .) anyways it made for a great bag. It was very spacious and roomy and I love a good Crossbody for a trip. It held plenty of water and snacks for hikes. And it was a great bag for a fun time all around. #leatherbag #leatherdye #fyp
