[Kenton Spaulding]

Greetings all. I've finished 2 scabbards in my life, both functional, but fairly basic. I'll include pictures for reference I'm expecting two new Albions in 2021 and I'd really like to continue improving my scabbards. My wife got me a leather tooling kit for Christmas, and I've found plenty of videos to help me work on that skill. What I haven't really found is great instruction on getting multiple colors into a piece of leather. How does one get a blue background, for instance, with gold vine work? Do you die the whole piece blue and then paint the vines? Do you somehow apply different dyes carefully to different areas? Based on my small amounts of experience dying leather I feel like it would be difficult to pull that off without making a splotchy mess. Now, I'm not expecting to craft a DBK or other fine artisan masterpiece off the bat, but I would like to shoot for the multicolored look. Any advice or lessons learned?

[Harry Marinakis]

IMHO
If you look at historical scabbards, they're not decorated in the manner in which you describe, except perhaps scabbard for kings. And then, the decoration is more fancy metalwork and jewels rather than dyes/paints.

That being said, you will find it easier, and achieve a better outcome, if you dye the background and then paint the tooled details.

Angelus has a very nice line of acrylic paints for leather, including metalic paints, as well as sealing agents. This stuff is different from the regular acrylic paint that you find at craft stores. The Angelus paint has more of a rubbery texture.