HOW I MADE COLDPLAY X & Y INSPIRED JEANS

Kia Ora! This post is my first true post outside of my Isolation Diary series! I'm super excited to launch this, and have something other than a day-to-day on here.

These jeans turned out so much better than I expected and I ended up turning a pair that I've only worn once into a pair I want to wear all the time.

I really like Coldplay. I grew up with their music, and one of my earliest memories is exploring on top of a shelf and finding the CD of the X & Y album by Coldplay. I forgot about it for a long time, and then came across it again a few years back and the image instantly took me back. I remember listening to them on my Dad's IPod Nano 1st generation and falling asleep to White Shadows, my favourite song of that time. When I discovered Spotify, my Coldplay playlist was one of the first ones I made, as I needed a collection of my favourite songs to binge whenever I felt like.

Anywho -

STEP ONE - Find Some Jeans!

Because I created these during the Coronavirus lockdown, I was a little stripped for options, and had two choices, either these dark navy ones, or a light wash grey that happened to be one of my favourite pairs. I was still struggling to find an idea of what to paint when Magic by Coldplay came over my speaker. I then realized that the dark jeans were the exact shade of the X & Y album, and similar to the Ghost Stories one too. So, now I had two choices:

X & Y Ghost Stories

Now as you can imagine, Ghost Stories is extremely intricate, and I doubt I could barely pull a design as half as good as that on paper, let alone on fabric. So I decided to go for the X & Y album, to keep it simple and see if it would even work, as I had never painted jeans before.

STEP TWO - What you need!

- FABRIC PAINTS/ACRYLIC PAINTS

- JEANS/CLOTHING

- THIN PAINTBRUSH

- PEN FOR OUTLINE

- PAPER (OPTIONAL)

I have a set of 14 acrylic colours that I used for this project, but I would highly recommend getting fabric paints, or using a medium of some sort to set the acrylic into the fabric and prevent cracking. I just had a bit of a tight situation regarding the virus and could only get access to regular acrylics. I had a super thin paintbrush for this project as well, it just helped in getting the little cubes square and getting paint into the fibres. I also used a silver gel pen to outline the cubes and show where I needed to change colour, to make it easier to get it accurate. I also put some paper in the back pocket, just to protect the rest of the jeans.

STEP THREE - Outline!

As I said above, I used a silver gel pen to outline the cubes. I initially drew the design on a piece of refill and cut the individual squares out to arrange on the pocket. I held them on and traced around them with the pen. When it came to the painting I just made sure to paint over the pen, so that it became a solid colour design with no outline at all. I also made sure with a ruler that the design was straight, I think I would have internally died if I had painted the design and it turned out wonky.

STEP FOUR - Painting

I started from the bottom and worked up, starting with the colours that I didn't have to mix to get the right shade. The trickiest bit I found was getting the dashed line in the middle of the design, as I didn't want it too thick and uneven. I did two coats initially of each colour, and then went back and did a third coat and on some colours, a fourth. Yellow, Orange and Green were quite pale, so they needed a bit more touching up than the others.

After I finished the initial design, I actually went back and painted the hem of the opposite leg in the same colours, just for a little more colour. It also meant I could try a sealing technique that didn't end up working 😂.

STEP FIVE -

Now I just waited for them to dry and they were done! Now there's only one thing to do, wear them! It was a real good idea to make these in the middle of quarantine, as I now have no excuse to wear them out, but hey, at least they're there for after we get out of lockdown.

So, now hopefully that my guilty conscience has ACTUALLY posted something, I'll be able to ease my mind a little and hopefully settle into somewhat of a routine of getting other content on here. Hope you're all doing well and thanks for the read!