Time to dye the leather cosplay armor pieces. Where I am not partial to dying fiber, I don’t mind dying leather. Fiebing’s leather dyes are easy to use, especially with daubers or large wool pads (synthetic works fine too). First, I lightly dampen the leather, not so much that the color changes, but so that it is cool to the touch. Then I apply the color. The method of application effects the final color variation; small circles with a dauber produces a mottled color, large swipes with a pad gives more even color, but without some of the interesting depth. Applying color over existing color produces different looks as well. I always do a color swatch test when color is critical.

When the leather dried, I had a surprise.

The pauldron was a nice brown, but the vest was yellow, and they should have matched. What happened is that when I dyed the leather, the pauldron pieces were dry, and I rewetted them. The vest was still wet from shaping. They had a similar moisture content by feel, but obviously not a similar dye take up. Rewetting the vest and applying several more coats of dye fixed the issue.

For the straps, I dyed the underside with a dark brown dye, which also changed the surface color. I liked this effect, because Link’s armor is not all one color.

Now we get into wet shaping the leather I cut for the cosplay Link armor. To help bulk up the shape and give me something to shape to, I made forms from EVA foam sheet. The foam is water proof, so wet shaping the leather won’t damage it.

I continued to press the shape into the leather as it dried. The clear tube that I used the shape the edges of the vest worked well to start, then I removed it and hand shaped the ridge. When the pauldron pieces were dry, I trimmed the edges so they just wrapped the edges of the foam.

Yahaha! I’m not done making Zelda cosplay pieces! Yay! I also jumped on the opportunity to make some leather armor for a Link costume. I cut pattern pieces from paper for the fitting, then cut the leather using the paper as a guide. The leather is vegetable tanned tooling leather 3/4 oz, which is thinner than typically used for actual armor, but is suitable for cosplay where it is better to be light weight.

I used my rolling ruler to lay out strips of leather for belts. It isn’t as precise as a strip maker, but worked better than I thought it might.

3/4 oz leather can be cut easily with kitchen shears, which also makes it nice for cosplay applications.