#leather dye

have any of you lovely people got any experience with dyeing leather? i need some help.

i bought the above bag at a charity shop. it’s radley, so definitely real leather. i also bought some angelus leather dye in oxblood. i cleaned the handbag with dish soap and water, dried it off, and did i think three coats of the oxblood - you can see the first coat going on in the top right pic! the final colour was beautiful, it was all dried, i was super happy.

the only problem is… the dye is coming off. so much dye is coming off. like, if you rub your hand on it, your hand goes pink, kind of dye coming off. i tried buffing it, tried wiping it with alcohol as they recommend on the website (the rag turned bright pink lol), and tried using some shoe sealing spray i had (did nothing other than make the dye bleed). there is absolutely no way i can use the handbag in the current state because everything it touches turns somewhere between burgundy and pink.

what should i do? i’m assuming i massively screwed up on prep (i read online that cleaning with dish soap was fine, but i now realise angelus has like… finish stripping prep stuff you’re supposed to use) and / or have just applied way too much dye. do i just keep wiping with alcohol until it stops transferring? will one of the angelus top coat products fix this? i have been googling but everything else i can find online is like “angelus dye is super fast, never rubs off on anything!”

So, uh, my vinyl gloves apparently ruptured 😅

I could never find a good enough quality photo to read the actual flavor packet names, so I found the original post about the silk scarves where she had the combinations in list form. I’ve combined them here. Her instructions also say to heat the water and 2 tablespoons of vinegar. 

Kíli's gear - Next project

A little bit of Kíli's royal blue.

I waited all the time to finally can start dyeing!

For I didn´t have the color I wanted, and as per usual I can´t await anything, I just mixed two colors. I used the Eco-Flo Color Stains in the tones “Saddle Tan” and “Briar Brown”.

The first layer I applicated was the "Saddle Tan”, after that I applicated 2-3 layers “Briar Brown”, until desired result.

Tadadada!!!!

Back of my journal:

In my opinion the back of the original looks like on the pic above. Here two images of the series, that show it quiet good: