Kata Dr-467 (how to Dye a backbag)

Some time ago a local camera store “photopoint” made a big -70% campaign to get rid of old stock.A backbag i had my eyes on for a long time was finally in my budget range- kr354.93 only problem- it was pink.

The bag in question was Kata dr467. it is one of the few that has an option for 17″ laptop and a dslr. So i bought it hoping i could dye it. later i also discovered a  17″ crumpler they had but it was too late..

I went through tartu unable to find any synthetic dye so i figured i might as well try the usual… horrible idea, it colored the whole bathroom, my hands but the bag just got a shade darker

impatient and desperate as i was, i got some fabric spraypaint from an arts store

looked like crap to be honest- dark blue was the only decent color they had and it had that crappy blue ballpoint pen shade + despite the masking, it looked as if “spraypainted”… duh!!

by now i had pretty much given up- just one more thing to try – ordered some synthetics dye from the UK, something called iDye poly

It arrived a few days later.  i washed the spraypainted bag so any “loose” paint particles wouldnt get in the way

it looked pretty bad at this point as for iDye, it could be used either through boiling or waching machine- i went for the waching machine. I just jammed it in the machine, added salt, cranked it to 90degrees and voila! it came out looking real neat! it doesnt bleed and the waching machine wasnt messed up either.

the previous spraypainting had added a nice texture, making it look a bit punk and unique- doesnt really look like a camera bag which is a good thing when traveling around ;)

it even colored the plastic logo and the aluminium parts

Perhaps this will be helpful to someone, i had no luck finding information when doing this :/

EDIT:  since some people are wondering how much $$ it took then here you go:

• crappy useless Polish color: 17eek /
• 150mm aerosol: 94 eek /
• iDye poly – 135eek / (50% of it is postal fee)
• All together – 246eek /

It could have been done just with idye, though the aerosol gave a cool texture. Overall, its still way cheaper then a new black bag and i think it also looks much cooler so im happy how it all turned out :)