Leathercare

Having bought my first (and possibly last) luxury bag, I want to take the best care of it. A friend has ever complained that her bag's moisturizer cost more than her face's. I thought that was so silly of her. Why buy something that's so expensive and expensive to maintain to boot?

Well, so here I am, doing the same thing. I resolved never to use my bag unless I protected it. Did my research and concluded that I had to buy Leather Honey Leather Conditioner and Apple Brand Garde Rain & Stain Repellent. I didn't plan to get a leather cleaner, coz I figured if I used a stain repellent, I shouldn't need to clean it, right?

I shortlisted nordshoe from eBay for overseas shopping. Shipping was a killer - estimated to be at least USD22 per item?! eBay is damn stupid - you can inquire about shipping options without committing to buy. And I don't know if the seller can charge just 1 shipping for buying 2 items.

There's a Singapore website Loving Your Bags that sells the products that I want, but not in the combination I want. They insist on throwing in other Apple Brand products or other Leather Honey products in the bundle. If I buy them ala carte, it's worse, like 4x the price for the repellent?! But that's the item price comparison alone lah. After factoring in the shipping from USA, it's about S$79 vs USD47. eBay *might* be cheaper. It all hinges on the shipping. I decided to request for cheaper shipping. Slower also can.

So, I committed to buy. Idiot seller didn't offer slow shipping. Quoted USD26.90 for shipping and I had to suck it up, making a grand total of USD51.83! It converted to S$74.26. Slightly cheaper than buying locally, plus the higher risk of overseas shopping. Argh. Loving Your Bags must have known this all along!

And here they are.

Bag-care tips suggest testing new products on the leather square first. So I did.

Leather Honey Leather Conditioner is clear, odorless and slightly sticky. I used a cotton bud to apply some on a corner of the leather square. No lint-free cloth yet.

Immediately after applying Leather Honey Leather Conditioner.

I left it to absorb for 1 day.

The next day, after wiping off the excess.

Looks almost the same. The area with the leather conditioner is more reflective.

So, it seemed safe to apply it on my whole bag. Didn't bother to get any lint-free cloth. I just used the Daiso cotton puff which is very strong.

I put a drop of conditioner on the cotton puff. The cotton puff didn't absorb it readily. Gently, I swiped the cotton puff over my bag. I see what they mean by "a little goes a long way". Just a drop is enough to cover the entire of one side of the bag. I only needed more when the cotton puff gradually soaked up. The cotton puff got harder to handle as I went on, but never once did I get stray fibre. I only needed like 2 or 3 pieces to do the whole bag. Good!

I tried to avoid the metalware, but inevitably got some conditioner on them. I just wiped it off. No idea what would happen to the metalware, but so far, they are still fine.

I left my bag to dry overnight. The next day, I wiped it down with tissue paper. Done!

Not really. Still need to spray the repellent. I got Brother to do this for me. Spray liberally on all surfaces. Let it sit dry. I didn't test if the repellent works. I'll rather not.

Tada! Now my bag is really ready to be used by Sotong and her careless dad!

I wish to add that eBay is very user-unfriendly! I was trying to access the same product from my purchase history and guess what, there's no link! All I have was the seller's nick, and view seller's other items.

I clicked the seller's nick and was brought to his store, but he was selling tonnes of other products and there doesn't seem to be any way to search within his store. So I had to click on View similar items and thankfully, the same item was the top result. Maybe I simply don't know how to use eBay, but if I find Taobao easier to navigate, something is wrong with eBay!