Pinterest challange: polka dot jeans

For week four of Merrick's Pinterest Challenge I actually combined two of Merrick's own tutorials, boot cut jeans to flared jeans, and DIY polka dot jeans. This is the result:

 

I started with this pair of boot cut jeans I've had in my refashion pile forever:

The color was great and the top fit perfectly, but I needed to make them skinny jeans! Polka dot boot leg jeans would probably just look weird. So I turned them inside out and laid a pair of jeans I had previously refashioned over the top to mark where I needed to take them in.

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I pinned them into place so that I could take them in and make them skinny jeans:

For the polka dot part, I pretty much followed Merrick's tutorial. Except I used white fabric paint I had laying around, and the bottom of a smallish pen to basically stamp the polka dots onto the jeans. 

Before I show you more of the "after" photos, I want to introduce everyone to my fantastically talented new photographer:

So gorgeous!

I admit it, I'm a little biased about her talents. That's right! I taught my four year old daughter how to use my camera. Am I crazy? Maybe, but she does good work. I actually had her do the outfit photos for my post on how to modernize 90's vintage too. Can you believe it? 

Without further ado, the "after" photos. And can you tell how windy it was when these photos were taken? It was intense.

Look at my hair! Yikes!

Here is a closer pic of the final product:

The dots turned out nice and even, even if the white is a little too bright for my liking. I was originally going for a more subtle look.

They turned out....ok. I would not recommend using plain old fabric paint. If I were to do this again I'd use a bleach pen. The white paint was not only too bright, but it cracked as it dried, so these will not be pants I will get a ton of use out of (I still haven't washed them, I'm a little scared to). That's ok, they're a cute and trendy spring piece, but if I wanted them to last I'd use bleach for sure. And Merrick's dots were much smaller which was initially the look I was going for. But they're super cute overall. I will be using them a few times before the paint wears off for sure.