hi guys it's michelle little mamas house and today i am going to be doing a much requested in long-awaited tutorial which is how to die louis vuitton f eat leather and so you see here i have our subject which is one of my customers epi speedy i think this is a 30 yep epi speedy 30 and this was originally in that Kenyan fawn color or a brownish you can see the handles aren't done so that this and this side are the original color and she requested that we dye it black so what I've done is going ahead and as you can see I mean if I scratch into this this is done I've done two coats of dye on three of the four sides in the bottom but I left this side um undyed so that I can show you how to do it without you having to sit through me dying an entire bad just this section will be enough and handles will be enough for me to show you how the process works so let's go ahead and get started now what I have to complete this project are my black leather die today I'm using Kelly's that's just what I was able to get I have a very reputable cobbler near me who has been in business over 50 years and they sell both five eggs and Kelly's which Tydings owns Kelly so Kelly's is like their professional line of dye products and just depends on what they have in the store um he just happened to be out of five babies black when I went so I have the Kelly's professional black leather dye it's equivalent to five eggs it's the same alcohol based dye I have some acetone nail polish remover I have my paintbrushes and other implements for a bag of this size and since we're dying the whole thing black this my preferred tool is a little cotton swab or that comes with your die when you get it and then I have two old socks and one sock is going to be for applying acetone and one sock is going to be for wiping between coats and you try to keep them separate because you don't want to keep wiping with acetone once you're done and it's set because that's going to be taking layers of dye off with it so just make sure you know like I know the one with the pink is my acetone and this one is just for wiping between coats so I'm going to go ahead and get started so the first step when you're dealing with epi leather it is a little bit different than the shed and that you need to do a little bit more dye prep to it you need rather than just using a dye prep solution you need to really sort of deglaze it because epi leather if you've ever looked at it carefully does have a slight sheen over the top of it okay and so if you try to apply dye directly to this without prepping it the dye will not soak into the leather it will sit on top that will be vulnerable to scratching it won't be durable um as if you had taken the time to properly prepare the surface before applying the dye you can use isopropyl alcohol it is another option here to deglaze the EPI however I just happened to I happen to like the acetone a little bit better I think it gets a little duller if you will and all that Sheen will be restored to the bag once we seal it but for purposes of applying the dye which is step one you really need to dip Lea so I happen to use this now an important step when you're dealing with epi is that if you feel the EPI or anybody who's familiar with epi will tell you that it's textured so it has a green and that green is not prudent so if I were to take my acetone and start scrubbing on the leather with it it will take that beautiful texture right off so I cannot stress this enough when you've come in with your acetone to deglaze the section you're going to work on and I do tackle this type of bag in sections work gently I cannot stress that enough you don't want to push you want to be Swift you don't want to let your acetone soaked cloth absorb on to any one particular spot you will see some color transfer and probably won't be able to see it on my used sup but you will be able when you do this on yours to see it don't look like this Kenyan font color is coming up off the bag do not panic we are dying the bag so some of this color comes off it's not that big of a deal if you were just cleaning this and tried to clean it with acetone you were taking color off I would say stop immediately but in this case we're really just trying to break down that first coat of Sheen on your bed so that the leather has something to stick to if for lack of a better phrase so what I'm doing is I'm just going ahead and rubbing down this surface I'm going to rub this tab because I got some dye on it before but I hadn't prepped it and that's not fatal you just rub it down and we'll we'll treat it while we do this side okay make sure you get your piping and you know hope you can see how gently I'm not applying any pressure I'm just rubbing and if you look very very closely under the black you'll see there's some of the original dye used to bag this color because the leather didn't come off the cow this color it was treated so some of that comes off but it's not fatal it's not much it's really if you want inside there's a big white spot now it's just if you can tell the difference from before when I showed it to you some of that Sheen is now broken down okay so that's the first and I would say most important step to this process when you're dealing with peppy because otherwise everything you do afterwards is not going to stick it will be prone to chipping it will be more like if you just took paint and painted your Effie which you can you could do that if you wanted to what this is a dye job so we want it to be as permanent as possible so that the bag can be used so okay now what I'm going to do is I'm going to just apply my dye and you will see me do this if you've been watching my channel a million times so there's really nothing different about this part of the process I use the dauber because there's really no need to be finicky here we're dying everything we're not just doing piping where I need my tiny little brush although I will use my tiny little brush at least for this initial swipe through it's not needed we can just sort of apply it on and you want to do this relatively fast because you don't want your dye to seep into those ridges because that's going to create streaks in your finished product so you want to swipe this on pretty quickly and you don't have to be perfect we're going to do several coats so if you miss a little area it's not fatal but you want to work relatively swiftly and you don't want to let your dye pool so if you can see here I'm trying to work so that my dye doesn't all drip down one side you know just enough on your dauber so that you're saturating your area but then you're spreading it out quickly so that there's not one area that's sitting and die any more than any other that makes any sense whatsoever okay so I have that all on and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my other sock not the acetone sock I'm going to put it on my hand like a glove and I'm just going to wipe off any extra excess dye this is an important step with epi because again any excess that's left sitting on there is going to absorb into that texture and it's just going to look wrong just like with epi um excuse me just like when you do Vernie how you don't if you leave it on there it'll seep in and sit and pool in those LVS that embellished part the same thing will happen on your Effie okay so that's um the first go around now what I like to do is take one of my smaller brushes if I can find one that is not mom I take one of my smaller brushes I dip it in my dye and I come back and I really get in the cracks of the piping in case there's any I missed because especially when you're going from a medium to light color like that Kenyan phone if there is a little bit of that Fond that I miss the customer will be able to see that it's going to stand out like a sore thumb so when I come back I just want to look at it with a very critical eye I'm going to look at it from all different angles I always like to do the sides of my tab the back of my tab anything that's going to really stick out on the finished product needs to be gone over so that it's not visible and you know this part there's no rush you're working with such little amounts of die here during you know this part of the process that there's no rush to get through to wipe you know don't don't blow the die on it's very hard to see because my brush is black and dye is black but there's very actual little amount of dye in the product it looks like I'm digging into that jar of dye but I'm about is about this full so I have to dip down just to even get a little bit on my brush but I don't work with a lot on the brush points and tilt the bag this way tilt the bag that way make sure that you're looking at that piping from all angles because the last thing you want to do is be finished have it sealed and then all of a sudden you say oh shoot I see the brown because it's I promise you it's going to stand out like a sore thumb if you're not a little bit diligent about it at this point and again this is where that wiping very well with the prep first comes in because you don't need a lot now for it to absorb it and cover those spots or as if we didn't those spots would be sort of resistant to the dye and we absolutely do not want that all right I'm just going to turn them over from this side and then just again checking my spotted making sure there's nothing that okay so so there you go so now um what we do is we would let this coat dry a full 24 hours okay and for purposes of this demonstration we'll do pretend that it's been 24 hours just I will go back into the second coat with the required dry time but you know I want to show you the full process so let's pretend it's been overnight it's dried I'm going to come back in and I mean it does it does dry to the touch quickly it's not on my hands so it's dry ish right now but don't be fooled it really should be set left to sit to absorb into the leather for full 24 hours before you do the next coat so and again this bag is actually by the time you're seeing this this has been gone back to the customer if pre-filmed for the next couple of weeks because of the Christmas season I know I'm going to be very busy so none of this that you're seeing is happening right now I'm sorry these are all gone back to the we're so it's possible you've seen this bag if you follow me on Instagram or on Facebook but this is just the tutorial of how I did it so it's been 24 hours in our mind and we're going to come back in with our acetone sauce again and we wipe again and this is going to take off anything excess that didn't stick the first go around okay and if it didn't stick the first time it's not gonna stick permanently so there's no going over it's just going to make a sloppy mess so give it a good wipe wipe those edges okay and then when you're just coming right back in once give it you ask to dries pretty quickly once it hits the air so I just wait until it it like to see how it looks what okay so it has a little bit of a wet look to it to give it another 30 40 seconds fan it off and it dries very very quickly once it hits air see okay whoops and add that okay so it's dry right so now that the acetone is dissolved or evaporated I should say that's not a very bored now if the acetone is evaporated we come back in with another coat of dye and we do exactly it looks the same thing and this is what I'm talking about look if I just slop it on and I start moving the background you'll see it's starting to streak and puddle it's starting to streak and puddle down the sides that's an example of what not to do okay so I'm showing you that that's what happens if you don't spread it out and that will I mean it's not fatal the bag isn't going to look awful but it's not going to look professional it's not going to look I don't want to say perfect because none of these bags are perfect I know a lot of people watch this as I own your work is perfect and that expectation is a little bit unrealistic one I'm showing this to you on camera so you know any minor little tiny imperfections you don't see I see them I notice them if they're there I've had customers point stuff out to me and send it back and I fixed it but you know nothing is perfect but you know when there's a process that you can undertake in order to make it as perfect as you can make it I always try to do that because you know this is somebody else's bag it's somebody else's baby they want to use it they want to carry it they want to be able to knock into a door and I have it be ruined I've done that before so um you know I just take my time go over all the you know take some the necessary precaution don't just be a mess and just slop it on there because the result is going to be affected if you do that okay so go ahead and wipe off any excess again we don't want that pooling that is not how it's supposed to look it will definitely not look like it just came out of the Louboutin factory dyed black if you do that so that excess has to go okay and you will notice when you first start wiping it will feel a little bit tacky but once you get the excess off that goes away and then it just feels smooth like you can hear right okay so you can hear my cloth is is running smoothly over the leather it's not getting stuck or any area that it is hear that it's getting a little bit stuff into there that means there so a little too much dye in that area so we've got to wrap it a little bit more alright so once all that tacky feeling is off here you go that there is that side and I will do one more code on that for three full coats before it's done and again letting it dry 24 hours wiping it first with my prep and then applying the dye so um I am going to go ahead the same processes for the handles and I'll show you what it looks like once it's all done alright guys I'm all I'm back and bag is all finished so I will show you now I've gone ahead as you can see this side is completely dyed the handles on both sides are dyed they're not completely dry yet again it's 24 hours at least from need to even consider it to be fully dried so that's still drying I've dyed the zipper rail the zipper hasn't been cleaned yet so that's it doesn't look its best but the zipper rail has been dyed and the bag is now for all intents and purposes done so what I'm going to do is this will dry for a full 24 hours at least if it still feels a little bit tacky to the touch like these sides the two sides in the bottom three sides in the bottom that I did prior to this tutorial are completely dried it's been drying a couple of days now so they feel smooth they don't feel tacky they feel like dry there's no transfer coming off in my hand even though it's not sealed yet but they're completely dry and finished this side um still has a slight tack feel to it as do the handles even though they've been wiped you get when you've been doing it for a while you can just sort of feel it's not dry yeah so this will dry at least 24 hours until that you feel is completely gone and then what I'll do is I'll take a clean rag wipe it down really well and then I'm going to seal the whole thing with leather Sheen it is the same process that I showed you on the previous tutorial for sealing leather Sheen I apply it with a sock and just rub it all over the bag until the bag is sealed and do a couple of coats and then as soon as that's done this is all set and we'll be off on this way to back to its owner so there you have it that is how to dye really the time eppie leather thanks for watching bye