How to Paint Your Clothes: 3 Fun Painted Jeans & Bag Ideas

Tools and materials:

• Old jeans
• Old bag
• Acrylic paints
• Fabric medium
• Paintbrushes
• Clothing iron

Heart-pattern jeans

1. Paint the hearts on the jeans 

With white acrylic paint, start by drawing thin hearts at first. Once you’re satisfied with the shape, then go over them multiple times to make them bolder.

We recommend adding a fabric medium to the acrylic paints so the paint will stay flexible and fade-resistant.

A cool trick is to turn your pants to the side to draw a few hearts so you can get this sort-of half heart effect on the front and back that looks full on the side.

Drawing across the seams can give your pants an interesting and fun pattern.

2. Let dry and heat set 

Let your pants dry for 24 hours. Next, heat set the fabric by placing a piece of spare fabric over the jeans and ironing over it. We’re using an old pillowcase.

Heat setting is the best way to seal acrylic paint and ensures that the paint is permanently stuck to the material. It won’t be disturbed by rough wear or washes.

Here’s the final look of the jeans.

Flower jeans

1. Paint the flower on the back pocket

For this one, we really wanted to compliment the red stripes on the sides of these jeans, so we decided to go for a red flower on the back pocket.

The flower looked a little isolated, so we decided to bring it out to the edge of the jeans for a more standout look. We also added an additional flower on the side.

This way, the jeans stand out way more than if we had just done the back pocket.

2. Let dry and heat set 

Let dry for 24 hours and then use an iron to heat set again.

Here’s the final look of the flower jeans!

Painted bag

Moving on from the DIY painted jeans, now we’re going to show you how to paint a bag!

1. Apply a white base 

Since we’re working with black leather, we covered the bag in white paint as a base first before adding the colored paints so the colors stood out more.

2. Paint the design

Now we paint the design. We went for a really chic, bust design and decided to cover the entire purse.

Fortunately, with a leather bag, you don’t have to heat set, so as soon as the paint is dry, you’re ready to wear it!

Here’s the final look of the hand-painted leather bag!

DIY painted jeans and bag ideas

That’s it! I hope you got plenty of ideas from this tutorial and you can now go out and make your own aesthetic painted jeans and bags!

Comment below if you decide to do one of these designs or which one is your favorite!