DIY Post: Handpainted Leopard Bag

Finally back online! Had to suffer through 12 hours of no electricity today. Insane! The power company was fixing something. Would have headed out to the mall but I found out too late that it was gonna go on for 12 (freakishly-long) hours. Kept thinking (hoping) that it would come back earlier but it didn't. Anyway, nuff of that. Just stressing because I just missed an entire day's workload. But before work, here's a quick post.

Here's a photo post of how I handpainted my leopard bag. This isn't really a tutorial but I guess, you can grab some ideas on how you can create or design one for yourself.

Materials:
1. Angelus Leather Acrylic Paints - normally use these for painting shoes but figured they would work just fine
2. Bag (thrifted, old bag etc.) 
3. Medium sized round brush 

Here's the bag I started with. This one was thrifted for a dollar. It's made up of canvas along with leather accents. Found it in great shape except that it was rather dirty in places. Honestly thought that I could take out the stains with a strong bleach but they didn't come off. So, I changed tactics and tried dyeing/staining it with coffee and tea. I was actually just experimenting. Figured that it works on paper, thought that it might work on canvass too! Unfortunately, it didn't on my bag. Submerged it for more than a couple of hours  but all I ended up with was an even more uneven looking bag.

So, changed tactics yet again and decided to just mask the stains and blotchy color with paint. I started painting random leopard marks on the sides. Why leopard? Because it's easy. :) And if you're as impulsive and impatient as I am, "easy" is your best friend.  

There's no need to be perfect with the marks.

Then I started coloring them in. I used brown and mixed it with copper for the final coat. You can pretty much use any other color you want. The paint I used isn't as opaque as I wanted so it was hard to pick a much lighter/brighter color.    

This is what the bag looked like the other day. I thought it was okay but ultimately decided that it didn't look much like a leopard print so I tinkered with it again today. And thanks to the 12 hours of no internet for me, I had time to work on this. 

Here's the glamor shot. I actually like how this turned out. I didn't fuss in making the spots totally perfect since I wanted the handpainted look to show through. What do you think? Lemme know what DIY projects you've been working on lately, would love to hear about it. Cheers!

 

P.S. Just realized that you can easily use Sharpies to do this if your bag is made up of canvas.