American Flag Shorts

With Forth of July coming up, I wanted to make a pair of American flag shorts! These shorts took me around an hour and a half to make and it looks awesome :)

Supplies:

-One pair of shorts

- Sponge makeup wedges ( I found that these work better than foam brushes because it allows you to blend the paint better)

- Fabric paint ( I used crimson red, marine blue, blue, and white from Tulip soft paint, pink rose from Tulip puffy paint, and crystal very berry red from Scribbles 3D paint)

- Painters tape

- Martha Stewart's white and gray glitter (optional)

- Sliver two-prong studs (optional)

- Cutting mat

- X-acto blade

- Printed star stencil

- sand paper or nail file

I Started by cutting an old pair of jeans into shorts. I did this by laying a pair of shorts that were the length I wanted on top of the jeans. Then I put painters tape around the area that I was going to paint.

I stated by painting a thin layer of white paint onto the shorts. When doing this, I made sure to not have a lot of paint on the sponge. This way, I could create a distressed look. I ended up doing two coats of the white paint.

Using the painters tape, I cut out 1inch strips. I then layer them on the shorts making sure they were evenly spaced.

For the first layer of paint, I mixed together pink rose and crystal very berry red. I did this so I could have a pink under tone to the stripes and because the crystal very berry red has sparkles in it. After that dried, I sponged on crimson red and removed the tape.

I taped around the area I was going to paint blue. While I was painting, I blended together the blue and marine blue paint.

I then found a star pattern on google images. I transferred it onto google drive and made the stars 1inch by 1inch. After I printed the stars, I cut the out using an x-acto blade and a cutting mat.

Before I started painting, I mixed white and gray glitter into the paint. I then started to paint the stars using the star stencil. I recommend creating a stencil with two rows of stars, This way, you can use the second row to line up the stars to make them equally spaced.

After I let the paint dry, I decided to add studs around the pockets. I used the two prong studs and used an x-acto blade to make slits for the prongs to go into.

When I finished adding the studs, I used a nail file to distress the bottom of the shorts, If you have sand paper, I recommend using that.