I've had this pair of sad white jeans for about 3 years and to date had never worn them. I tried to think of fun prints to paint on them, maybe some wood grain, maybe some lipstick marks like this smart lady Maegan, maybe a cool Aztec design? I finally decided on little triangles for several reasons, easy to cut out a template and paint, can be fun for summer and winter, and they remind me of little woodsy trees.
Pants cost me probably $5 at Savers, paint cost another $3, other goods were gathered from around my house so this was definitely a low cost craft.
I don't think your supposed to wear white jeans after 1986.
I decided on black paint since that would be the easiest to match with other clothes. I often love to wear all my neon things at once which is not okay if you're not a tweenager, so I wanted to keep the palate as simple as possible.
Used the back of an old cereal box, played around with some different sizes of triangles until I found a nice middle ground. Marked out a grid on the back of the box with my ruler, cut out one sample triangle on a separate piece of paper and used that to systematically draw the rest on the grid.
I'm not kidding I've had these cereal box cutouts for 5+ years.
Cutting out was a pain but I realize now that it prints much better if you cut very carefully. You'll see on a section of pants below that if you cut past the edges of the triangle the paint will seep through the cracks.
Google triangle print pants, it's hilarious.
I started out taping the sides of the cutout to the pants as I was going and it was helpful. If I could do this again I probably would've painted the lower/flatter parts of the pants first then gone back with an individual stamp and done the top part. It didn't lie flat very well and some of the triangles look like blob monsters.
This image isn't super helpful, just showing the process.
I used the already painted bits to line up the cutout on the next section, as long as you're very careful there shouldn't be any smudging. Nail polish remover and bleach don't work on fixing mistakes so you have to be scary careful.
Looks so nice and neat, not like another attempt at doing these by hand. I don't want to talk about it.
Steadily working down one leg then the other, I waited overnight to turn them over and start on the back.
I swept my floors just for you guys! You're welcome :)
In the end they turned out really good, despite the blobbers near the top. I got lots of compliments that night when I wore them to a concert and can't wait for the weather to cool down to break em out again!
A close up shot, see some little guys are not like the others. At the end of the day it adds to the rustic charm of them.
