Hey y'all,
Posted this on reddit but thought I should have it here as well
Recently, I purchased the California poppy Apple leather link from FB marketplace and although I was very happy with how the band looked and the sturdiness of the magnets (got burned with some cheap aliexpress bands that kept peeling off and magnets were meh), I was utterly disappointed with the quality of the paint and the awful discoloration that looked like someone had taken a beating at it.
So I started looking online to find potential remedies. Went from "how to get leather patina" down the rabbit hole to "how to customize Dr. Martens boots" and the solution was clear. I had to ("had" because OCD had already kicked in) paint my not so new band.
After some pretty basic research I decided to use Angelus acrylic paint for leather -> amazon link with something called acrylic paint duller -> amazon link. Sidenote, before this project I had zero experience in arts and crafts (last time I used scissors and glue was back in elementary school) apart from painting walls on my house and some DIY projects repainting some furniture during COVID, but in general I'm good with my hands. Matching the previous paint would be an impossible task if I just wanted to do touch ups, so I decided to paint it all brown knowing that in case of failure, I could still have another take at painting it black.
Steps I took:
Attached you can see the before and after.
* Color looks closer to the one I'm wearing the band, not the most photo-friendly lighting I have on my desk
Posted this on reddit but thought I should have it here as well
Recently, I purchased the California poppy Apple leather link from FB marketplace and although I was very happy with how the band looked and the sturdiness of the magnets (got burned with some cheap aliexpress bands that kept peeling off and magnets were meh), I was utterly disappointed with the quality of the paint and the awful discoloration that looked like someone had taken a beating at it.
So I started looking online to find potential remedies. Went from "how to get leather patina" down the rabbit hole to "how to customize Dr. Martens boots" and the solution was clear. I had to ("had" because OCD had already kicked in) paint my not so new band.
After some pretty basic research I decided to use Angelus acrylic paint for leather -> amazon link with something called acrylic paint duller -> amazon link. Sidenote, before this project I had zero experience in arts and crafts (last time I used scissors and glue was back in elementary school) apart from painting walls on my house and some DIY projects repainting some furniture during COVID, but in general I'm good with my hands. Matching the previous paint would be an impossible task if I just wanted to do touch ups, so I decided to paint it all brown knowing that in case of failure, I could still have another take at painting it black.
Steps I took:
- Cleaned both bands with a leather conditioner I had for the leather seats of my car and let it dry
- Used a mixture of acetone nail polish and rubbing alcohol to take off as much color as I could from the California poppy paint. That's actually the most scary part as I kinda felt there was no turning back. Again I let it dry completely for at least a couple hours (you can also use hair dryer to speed up the process, cold air and make sure there is no dust around)
- I mixed 5g of the brown acrylic paint and 0.5g of the duller (that's 10% of the paint and used to remove take off some of the shininess of the acrylic paint as I wanted to give a more matte finish)
- Started with a very light coat and waited 20-30 minutes to dry. Again you can use hair dryer to speed up the drying but it's advised not to add another coat in less than twenty minutes
- In total I did 3 coats and for the last one I waited a full day before using it with the watch.
so I might as well wait and see.
Attached you can see the before and after.
* Color looks closer to the one I'm wearing the band, not the most photo-friendly lighting I have on my desk
