Hand Painted Stars and Stripes Pants DIY

Customize your own rock n' roll inspired jeans with easy stars and stripes! I created this project while I was designing costumes for my new favorite Minnesota band 'Glitter Gun'.  Band leader Kaity Heart approached me with some great ideas for their band costumes and I decided to make hand painted stripe pants for lead guitarist Dan Star. They turned out so great we decided to do a second pair with stars!

Supplies:

-jeans

-fabric paint- I like Jaquard brand textile paints

-flat paint brush

-pencil

-star stencil or plastic star template

-masking tape

-ruler

I mixed black paint with a metallic silver to create a gun metal color which will look great under the stage lights and goes well with the whole theme of glitter for their costumes. For the star shapes I used plastic glow in the dark stars. I traced around them with a pencil and used a small flat paint brush to get a really nice clean lines.

 For the stripe pants I used a regular width masking tape to ensure nice clean even stripes. I started taping at the side seam and used a ruler to space out the next stripes working towards the center of the pants. It gets a little tricky when you get to the pockets, fly, and center back. Just remember to keep the spacing even and the stripes will most likely line up in a chevron in the center back seam.

Use a wide flat paint brush to paint on a thin coat of paint. You don't want to get your paint to thick as it might leak under the tape and you will lose your nice clean line. As you work across your pant legs let the paint dry completely before you turn your pants over to do the backside. When the paint is completely dry you can pull off the tape and reveal your perfect stripes.

Now that you've painted your custom rock n' roll jeans you have to heat set the paint so it doesn't wash out. All you have to do is throw the jeans in a really hot dryer, preferably an industrial one at a laundry mat, for 30 minuets. Now you are ready to boogie in style!

posted by Sarah