Before I post part III,

I just want to say thank my new best friend, Coconut Oil. You can use it to put a finish on the leather when you're done. You can use it as your liquid when you're blind-stamping designs. You can use it as a burn ointment when you've burned and scarred your forearm with a hot paring knife, in the midst of said blind-stamping.* It seals your gold leaf and your paint, and in large quantities, makes it easy to pare down the back of your leather.

*And have thus gotten yourself three cool-looking scars on your forearm, that you can say you got in a knife fight. Which is probably a better reason than "I was tooling leather, and I went to put the knife in a vat of water to cool, but it was hot enough to burn the rag to it's surface and stick to it, so it fell off and hit the arm three times."