How to Weather Pleather for Cosplay by Lisa Lou Who

The CosplayFabrics.com team was blown away when we met cosplayer Lisa Rosenberg (Lisa Lou Who) at C2E2 and learned that she used our 4-way Stretch Pleather materials to create her Dark Brotherhood cosplay. What impressed us the most was the technique she used to give the material a weathered look. Weathered pleather, if you will...

Finding the right product and technique to color any synthetic material can be a challenge, so we asked Lisa to put together a tutorial on how she achieved the amazing look!

What you'll need:

• Stretch pleather in a lighter color than what you want your final piece to appear
• Angelus Leather Paint (available from Amazon) a few shades lighter or darker than your pleather
• Paintbrush
• Paper towel

Step 1: Prep your fabric

When painting on stretch fabrics, it's best to have the fabric stretched the amount that would appear on the wearer. Cut out, for a bracer, a piece of cardboard that is half the circumference of the wrist up to half the circumference of the upper forearm, then stretch the pleather onto it.

Step 2: Prep your paint

Fill your brush with the Angelus Leather Paint and dab off any excess paint onto a paper towel until the brush is almost dry 

BONUS: did you know that spray-painted googly-eyes make cheap and lightweight rivets? Adhere onto pleather with Superglue! 

Step 3: Drybrushing

Apply paint to the surface of the fabric in a circular motion. Gently rub off any paint if it's applied too dark in areas. Apply heavily around edges of the garment piece, as well as any seams or objects to create a worn look.

And that's it! Super easy! Basically it's just drybrushing the leather paint onto fabric — something Lisa does with a lot of her cosplays to create depth.

You may even want to experiment with a technique borrowed from hard model weathering and layer several different colors. There's more than one kind of dirt! And, as always, test with a small piece of fabric first.

The 4-way Stretch Pleathers Lisa used, as well as all the cosplay fabrics from the Yaya Han Collection, are available right from this website for customers around the globe!