Duchess of york

I finally decided to start a blog to give those of you with nothing better to do a little insight to my boring but crafty life. To be honest, I really just need an outlet where I can pretend someone is listening to me, because let’s face it, my 19 month old I stay-at-home with doesn’t care that I improved the value of our home by upgrading the kitchen cabinets with a little bit of glaze or that I up cycled his old denim jacket into a rad new denim vest! I mean really, it’s awesome. One day you'll see it!

Anyways, for anyone who knows me knows that I can’t go very long without taking on some kind of new crafty project. Pinterst has only fueled this flame and every day is something new. I’ve gotten a lot of questions regarding some of the projects I have posted on Facebook that I have done, so I thought by starting this blog it would give people who were interested a place to read my tutorials. I will warn, I am a bit scatterbrained, so this blog will be sort of a random diary for me, from everything to style and DIY projects, to my life events. I hope you all enjoy though!

With all that being said I would like to introduce my first post project. DIY AMERICAN FLAG SHORTS!

I’ve been feeling very patriotic lately. Maybe it’s because it’s finally summer around here and I am stuck in between the Memorial Day and July 4^th holidays. I first saw these lovely shorts on Pinterest and then found an amazing DIY tutorial for them via ASCOTFRIDAY you can find here. (BTW, she is amazing and has a fabulous style blog if you would like to follow her.)

My shorts basically followed the same idea; however, I started out with an old pair of jeans. I always seem to get a project in my head at like 10 o’clock at night but, I don’t ever have the right supplies for the job. And again, if you know me, when I have an idea, I run with it. There is no waiting until tomorrow.  It has to be done today. Well, that happened a few times with this project. First, I didn’t have a pair of shorts that I really wanted to sacrifice for the project…. so, I found an old pair of jeans I haven’t wore in forever and just cut the legs off.

 

My jeans were also a bit of a darker wash, so I decided to bleach them first to make them look more faded and worn. All I did was mix 2cups of bleach with 4cups of water in a bucket and soaked the shorts for 10 minutes and then washed them.  You can soak your shorts for less or more time depending on the color you want, or if you like the denim wash they are, just skip this step.

They don't even look the same, do they!

After I washed and dried my shorts I got them ready to paint. In the tutorial by ascotfriday she used star stickers, and go figure, I didn’t have any, so I just printed out a star stencil and traced them onto my shorts. (With that being said, I had to paint around my traced out stars. This was a bit tedious and time consuming. I would recommend getting some star stickers if you don’t have much patience and like perfection. I thought doing it this way added some rough but lovely character to them though!) For the stripes I used painters tape and just taped off one side.

Now for the paint…. I used Anita’s Textile Medium and Anita’s Royal Blue and True Red paint. They can be found at any craft store. I followed the medium directions and mixed 1 part medium to 2 parts paint and then I just got busy painting. Be sure to put cardboard or a few sheets of paper inside your shorts so that the paint doesn't bleed through to the back side. 

I let my shorts dry about 2 hours before washing them. They weren’t completely dry after 2 hours but, I wanted some of the paint to wash out so they looked faded. If you want the colors to be vibrant, I suggest you let the paint dry completely.

 And that’s that! Aren’t they just to die for!