The Painted Jeans

Hello Readers. I did a really fun project recently. I saw some painted jeans on Pinterest that I couldn't resist copying. They were distressed and had cherry blossoms painted on the legs. Here is a link if you want to see my inspiration. These are a cheaper version of a designer pair the cost $500, according to what I read. I don't have $500 to spend on jeans so I made my own.

 I grew up near Washington DC and every spring the cherry tree blossoms would come out in the all trees along the tidal basin. The nation capital loses it's mind over this every year because it is so pretty. The trees are watched to predict when the blossoms will be at their fullest, it is part of our daily news and there is a huge National Cherry Blossom Festival.

I started with a pair of jeans that fit but were not my favorite pair. I didn't want to risk my favorite pair if it didn't turn out well. You never know.

I thought that I would like the jeans to be faded. So I soaked them in diluted bleach. It didn't turn out well. I have tried this before, I guess I am a slow learner. They did not fade evenly as I thought they would. I decided to go with it and see how it looked after painting them.

I got some paint from the craft section at Walmart. It was only 50 cents a bottle. It is basic acrylic paint that dries fast and doesn't wash out in the washer. (Wear old clothes or an apron if you try this idea.) The sponge brush came in handy as did a regular narrow child's paint brush. (Not shown.)

I smeared some white paint on the jeans randomly. It seemed to dry instantly. Then I painted black branches on the jeans too. I did it with no plan and no sketching first. I let the black paint dry for a few minutes.

I used the paint brush to add bright pink dabs of paint around the branches. It looked very bright but that's OK. I wasn't done. I didn't let it dry I went right into the next step.

I mixed some white and pink together for a lighter shade of pink and did a bunch of small dabs on the dark pink spots. Some dark pink showed through and some didn't. I had some nice variation in the colors. I didn't wait after this step either, I went right into the next step.

I added a little plain white paint on top of the light pink. Some of the paint started mixing together as I painted and that made it look even better. I was just doing tiny little dabs of paint with a small brush. Cherry blossoms are small and clustered together. I also thought I had covered the branches too much so I added a little bit more black on top of the black branches to make them show more.

I let it all dry over night and the next day I repeated these steps on the back of the jeans. I didn't do as much, just enough to coordinate with the front.

Here is the finished project, it was one of the most fun to do. I love painting and this was easy because it isn't meant to be perfect. They were really stiff at first but they got softer after one wash. It is a bit hard to see (Look closely.) the distressed knees that I added in the picture on the right because I was trying to show the cherry blossoms. 

Thanks for reading, now go make something fun for yourself.