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The carving and stamping of the design are finished, and now we can start working with colors.
For this, we will require dyes, pipettes, brushes, containers for diluting and mixing the paints, paper towels, a piece of sheep wool and some water.
A pipette is useful for transferring dyes or paints from a greater volume to a smaller one.
If a dye gets onto your fingers it will be very hard to remove, hence it is recommended to keep large containers of it closed.
Painting with dyes you should start with lighter colors and then go to darker colors.
It is recommended to have a separate brush for every color, because no matter how much you wash it, dark paint will remain on the brush and will appear when using lighter colors.
This is why I will start with bright light yellow dye, and go over the entire design with it.
Afterwards, I will use reddish brown shades to create a transition for color and brightness.
When you are using paints or dyes you should imagine the color wheel to know what colors compliment or create one another.
For example, mixing yellow and blue gives green but mixing green with red would make some dirty grey-brown.
After the entire design has been painted yellow, I take reddish brown dye Canyon Tan.
It is a water based dye and to create a smooth color transition I will be diluting it with water, slowly adding less amounts of water in such a way that a highly concentrated dye will be in the center of the design.
Before beginning to paint, it is important to know the difference between paints and dyes.
Paints stay on top. Dyes go between the fibers of the leather, and hence dyes are more tolerant to physical damage.
Paints however are brighter, and using one paint you can cover another.
You can't do this with dye, so we need to start with lighter shades and progress to darker ones.
It is important not to overfill the brush, or in other words, not dip it in too deep.
Do not dip it deeper than half the length of its tip or else the paint will run.
During this project I used water based Echo Flow dyes: one layer of Sunshine Yellow and three layers of Canyon Tan.
Three layers were necessary to achieve a smooth transition between the colors.
The background around the design was painted with a brown dye Java Brown.
After the dyes had dried, I noticed that the colors were too bright for a men belt, so I diluted a Dark Brown dye with the same volume of water and went over the entire belt.
These wool balls are very comfortable for applying dyes or oils.
Post painting, the leather protection must be applied.
For this I covered it with a Satin Shene protecting coat.