How to Turn Your Boring Jeans into a Work of Art!

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have a million pairs of jeans! Some of which you will wear religiously, and the rest will become part of your wardrobe furniture…

Well I decided to do something about my poor sad boring jeans! I decided to give them a lick of paint and this post is going to be showing you how easy it is, so that you can give your clothes the new life they deserve!

First: You’re going to need some fabric paint and some brushes

*If you don’t have fabric paint, I’ve heard that you can use acrylic paint and just iron over it once its dry!

Lets get into it!

The very first thing you need to do is put a layer between the fabric you want to paint and the fabric you don’t want painted. You can use cardboard or plastic bin bags etc, I just used a Multipack skips bag and that worked perfectly! Just shove your plastic or cardboard inside the pant leg of your jeans until you get to where you want to paint.
The next step is going to be finding a pencil or a marker that can wash away because you’re going to want to draw your design first. This will help you with your confidence first of all but it will also help you to map out your design fully so you can tell if you want to add any more or less to the design.

Once you’ve finished drawing your design and you’re happy with it. It’s time to paint!

For my design, I went for sort of a flower garden up one of my legs. If you’re interested in painting any of the flowers I created: here are some tips for how I created them! Except for the rose because that came about because of a spillage lol!

SUNFLOWER

To start, just draw a circle that will become the foundation for the rest of the petals. Then paint that circle brown.

After that, draw 8 petals coming from the original circle. Then paint the 8 petals yellow. After that, paint petals coming from the back of the original 8 petals in a darker yellow.

The last step would then be to paint a line straight down from the flower you painted and you can add some leaves if you want!

LAVENDER

For the Lavender, all you need to do is draw a few lines that will become the stalks. From the stalks you’re going to want to use a dark purple colour and use a flat brush and lay the paint brush flat to the fabric to create the shape. You’ll want to make the petals shaped in a long triangle. After that, use a lighter purple colour and go over the dark purple, leaving some of the dark peeking through.

If you want it to look more realistic, add a few thin leaves going in different directions at the bottoms of the stalks.

LILY

For the lily you’ll need 3 colours, a white, a orange/yellow for the inside and a red/pink colour for the flower itself.

For the leaves, just create a line of green with 2 leaves going in opposite directions with a tapered end.

For the flower, start off with a tulip shape from the green line and from that create a triangle shape at the top with a square shape coming out of the side. For the colours, make sure that you use the pink/red colour for the top of the flower and then blend the white into the middle of the flower in an ombre. Repeat that ombre for the front of the flower and that should be good!

Painting Process Tips

When you begin painting your jeans, you need to remember that layers are definitely your friend here. You’ll probably need to do at least 3 layers for colours that are a little lighter like yellows or greens.
I would recommend starting out with shapes and build up your layers until you’re happy with the opacity of the paint and then you can add your details on top of that. This will make your details the top layer which will also make them more vibrant.

I would also recommend using smaller and thinner brushes because this paint can definitely spread if you have too much product in one area.

So when you’re happy with your design and painting it’s time to let it dry completely.

Once the paint is completely dry you can grab your iron and a cloth that you can put between the iron and the painted jeans. You’re then going to want to iron your design for about 3-5 minutes to ensure the paint goes into all the fibers and this will make sure that when you wash your jeans, the paint will stay!