Rescuing Purses: I want to catch them all!


 I love leather hand bags.  The one that I found above is the one that I am using now.  You should know that I find a lot of my bags at second hand stores.  Now, I don't know where you live and how you live but as I mentioned before, I'm not rich.  This means that I have to get my purses somewhere.  Yard sales, consignment stores, and secondhand stores are good opportunities to upcycle a purse.  I like to think of it as rescuing them. Okay so, this is not so much about the beautiful purse that I rescued but about rescuing the purse.

This beautiful purse was there among the riff raff of the second hand store that I went to.  There is nothing like having a bunch of purses in front of you and sorting through to find the one that calls to you.  Maybe I'm alone in this.  This purse was like that.  I saw the leather from afar.  It was more than I usually like to pay for my purses.  I saw that it needed some TLC.  There is a difference between wear and tear and patina.  Natural aging and use produce patina- It shows some distress but it's not torn up and used, or even abused.  There are some questions you should ask about buying purses secondhand.  Can you fix it?  Do you have leather glue?  Do you know how to clean canvas, leather, and or fabric?  Woven materials can be cleaned with diluted Dawn and a very soft brush or washrag.  Do you have a water mark?  Then you have to submerge the whole purse and let it dry evenly.  Tip: When you let it dry stuff it with cotton towels so that it can keep its form as it dry.  There is professional leather cleaner but understand the type of leather that you are dealing with.  I'll tell you what I like to use, Huggies baby wipes.  They have just enough emollients to not dry it out and it's gentle.  Alcohol gets rid of pen marks but it is really drying.  Mink oil nourishes dry leather but they have to kill a mink for it.  Linseed oil is said to be great for leather but I have never tried it.  Other natural oils my leave a stale scent after a while so be careful about what you use.  If you have another remedy, let me know below in the comments.

A good strap is a good purse.  Take care of the strap and everything else can probably be worked on.  This is a beautiful tan leather Coach bag.  I don't know what the original price is and I don't care.  I love the tassle and the gold accent it carries.  I don't care, I like Coach and I think that they create a beautiful product.  Beware of the fakes.  I'll speak more on them in another post.  Until then... Keep shopping.

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