DIY BLEACHED AMERICAN FLAG DENIM

Denim like this has been popping up all over lately and stores are charging outrageous prices for something that all of you at home could DIY very quickly and easily with supplies that you probably already have lying around! Read on for the how-to!

American Flag Jeans - $68.00

Supplies:

- pair of jeans

- bleach

- water to dilute the bleach

- sponge brush

- bowl to put diluted bleach in

- a ventilated place to work

- tape (painters tape or masking tape works best)

- iron

- cardboard (cereal boxes are easy to work with)

- some way to make a star (sponge stamp or stencil) 

- gloves while handling bleach

Directions:

1. first you need to set up your work area. lay out your jeans on a nice flat surface. place the cardboard in between the 2 layers of denim inside the jeans so the bleach doesn't bleed through to the other side randomly. dilute your bleach with water in a bowl. don't dilute it too much. check bottle for diluting instructions.

2. tape away stripes down 1 half of the jeans. to make sure it's a very crisp line, iron over the tape with an iron (no steam). this just melts the sticky stuff on the tape a little more so it makes the seal better)

3. use your sponge brush to fill in the stripes between the tape.

4. figure out how you will do the stars. i would say a sticky stencil of some sort so you can get crisp edges. if it is a sticky stencil that you use, remember to also iron it down so you can get the same crisp edges as the tape! :) fill in with the bleach. 

5. i would let this sit over night. if it's not working as well as you'd hoped. add more bleach with less dilution. let sit again over night. 

6. carefully remove the stencils/tape that you used and hand rinse the bleach off. wash by itself in a washer (or wait to do a whole load of hand bleached things so you don't accidentally bleach things you wouldn't otherwise want bleached).

BOOM! you have a custom pair of flag jeans! :)