I’m making my own belt gizmo out of some old computer guts, but that doesn’t help me in the holster department. For those who have made their own holsters, what did you use? Is there a reasonable alternative available in stores that I’m missing? I’m not going for 100% screen accurate with it, just something decent to do the trick.
It’s your typical leather tape measure holder. Found at most hardware stores for less than 10 bucks. Just cut off the excess and either paint it black or coat it in some shoe polish.
I used one like this:
Multimediamayhem sells custom made leather ones in black
http://archive.ghostbusters.net/plandetail/79/
Here’s the old tutorial that describes kinda the whole process! Regarding the leather pouch. 
I’m going with this option. I bought a cheapo one from Builder’s Mart and some balck show polish. It ran be back about $15… show polish was more expensive than I thought.
Not sure how this turned out for you, but the shoe polish wasn’t taking well to my tanned leather tape measure holster. I ended up using an Alcohol Based Sharpie marker, one of the big thick ones, to just color mine black. I need to do a bit of trimming on mine yet, and go over it a second time, but I will post up pictures of it if you want to see it. A decent amount of the leather dying info I found on the web used Alcohol based dyes, so i took a shot in the dark and hoped that this would work, and it seemed to turn out alright.
Just don’t get it wet or its going to run all over your suit. To properly dye leather you need to use a leather dye (ie:Fiebings) available at most shoe repair stores or leather tack shops and you will want to use a sealer. This will stop the dye from leaching out.
Good call. Thought about that after I finished it, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to seal it. Did it on an old tape holster I had laying around anyway, so when I want my semi screen accurate one, I’ll probably be hitting up your shop, along with the list of about 15 other things I will be purchasing in the near future…