Daria and I talked about doing this for a few months and this DIY finally happened on Tuesday while away  for the July Fourth weekend.  I say try it. You can write anything you want but ours was inspired by the Veda leather jacket.

Y O U   N E E D:

1 fine paint brush for acrylic paint

White acrylic paint

Chalk

Card paper

1 Exactor Knife

1 Old leather jacket

After drawing out one giant heart and cutting it out, we traced around each half using chalk.

Afterwards, paint over the chalk. Take your time.  It took a good fifteen minutes just to paint each heart. If you make a small mistake, use a little water to rub out the error.

Make sure to try on the jacket at every stage, especially before painting!  This is how ours looked after we painted the hearts and tried on the jackets about five times.  Tip: If you can, get someone to take a photo of you wearing the jacket so you can see how the image hangs while being worn.

We printed out a font from my laptop and used an exactor knife to cut out the letters on card paper.  Each cut out was taped to the jacket for placement within each heart.

Fill in each letter with chalk…

Remove the card paper showing the chalk lettering you just etched out.

Carefully trace over each letter with the acrylic paint.  This part takes the most time.  It took each of us about half an hour or more.  Apply two coats to avoid any see through areas.

The result after about five more try ons.  Our jackets are not perfect but we didn’t want them to be anyway to avoid them looking like the image was stamped on with a machine.  The effect was about looking like they were done well by hand.

Both of our jackets are from vintage shops which makes it easier to play with.  eBay always has brilliant jackets to use.

If you can’t be asked to go this route you can always cave on the Veda leather jacket but for the price I reckon this feels more satisfying and special.   Makes for a good gift too.

ps.  You can watch the whole DIY process  (plus get a tour of the home upstate) on Snapchat: Karenbritchick.

Let me know if you give this a go.