Hello everyone!
I bought this for my brother for a gift. But I want to engrave on it. I’m not sure if engraving is best since this is black leather or if there’s a way to paint the engraving and have the paint be permanent. My question is, do I need to mask this wallet? Or could I engrave without masking it? I’m asking because a video I saw the guy engraved without masking tape. Thanks!
I have little experience engraving leather, but in my opinion you will not get very good contrast on black with an engrave. There are lots of posts regarding leather in the forum, so I suggest you look through some of them. Proofgrade leather settings would probably work fine for this if it is genuine, veg tanned leather.
I will look and see, he prefers black which is why I got the black color. But thanks for your quick response.
You’ll likely end up with a sueded look, so if you pick good art it can definitely look cool.
(this isn’t mine, just an example off the web)
Very fine lines won’t show up, but something beefy, making use of negative (not engraved) areas can be lovely!
I very rarely mask leather, especially if it’s being engraved since cleaning the masking off is harder than cleaning the slight burn marks - on black even more so. Just put it in there plain and wipe it off with leather cleaner or a baby wipe when you’re done - and rub some leather conditioner or coconut oil into it after it’s clean to soften it back up again.
Before you start - make 100% sure that wallet is real leather 
even small amounts of engraving a vinyl based faux leather can make a permanent mess of your GF.
Oh that’s very helpful! Thank you! I was wondering if there’s a way to color the engraving side of the leather? Just curious as it was a thought.
I purchased the wallet off of Amazon. The description said it was 100% leather. But I will check the stickers, box or whatever just to be safe. Thanks!
Technically yes, there are leather dyes - but on black, not really. You can definitely use an acrylic paint, but the likelihood that it’ll break/crack on something flexible is pretty high.
I engraved the wallet and it turned out great. I used a gold sharpie to color in the engraving. Sharpie are supposed to be permanent so we’ll see how that goes. Here’s a photo of it. It’s my brother’s name since it was a gift. Figire I’d use his gift to test out using Sharpie as an engraving dye for leather.
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