There's this leather jacket on the My Chemical Romance webstore that I've been umming and ahhing over for the longest time. I liked the jacket, but to be honest I'd kind of remembered it differently and preferred my imaginary version to what was actually available, so surely it couldn't be that hard to just thrift a jacket and paint on it myself, right?
I tried really hard to thrift a jacket. I wanted this to be long lasting, so I was hoping I might even be able to thrift a real leather one. I know, dream big, but I traveled to three different towns and couldn't even find a fake one, so ended up just buying a faux leather jacket brand new because I'm impatient when I set my mind to something and couldn't wait anymore. I bought proper leather paint, as although there's a ton of tutorials out there telling you to just use artists acrylics, as an artist who uses acrylics I really don't recommend this. If you don't mind it cracking and peeling off after a few wears then fine, go ahead, but if you want it to last just buy the proper stuff. I went with Angelus which I'd used before to paint a pair of shoes and knew it held up well, and went with silver and pewter to mirror the design of the original jacket.
I spent a long time figuring out the design, I even spent time analyzing the serif font, which is called 'Blacker' by the way and free on DAfont. I also traced over the newer sigils logo which is what I convinced myself the jacket design actually was for a while. I know the design was supposed to read like a tombstone and now it doesn't, but I still prefer it. I also drew up a version where the text circled the logo entirely but it looked too cluttered and made it difficult to read, and I just liked this more.
I spent a while printing it out in various sizes, then I went around all of the design with an exacto knife to create a stencil. The paper felt too flimsy so I covered it in sticky tape before cutting everything out again, before trialing the stencil on a scrap piece of paper. I was really worried about the paint bleeding under the stencil and making a mess, so I tried both painting and dabbing with various sized paintbrushes before I found this kids kit that had some sponges on sticks which turned out to be the best! I did a single light layer of this, and traced around the sigils with a white gel pen so I could paint the rest by hand once I knew where everything went.
The stencil had bled on a couple of letters (you can really see on the first M) and I was panicking because I didn't want to have to go around the letters with black paint that might not be an exact match to the jacket and make the whole thing look a bit crap. Google told me to use acetone to lift it but I didn't want to risk ruining the faux leather, so I used isopropyl alcohol and it took some rubbing but it worked!
I'm really proud of how it came out, and I think I like the jacket even more because I made it! Most alt cultures are built on a history of DIY, so doing stuff like this always feels way more satisfying than "mall bought". It also sent me way back, as I remembered when I was a teenager and couldn't afford band shirts so I'd painstakingly trace the various logos of whoever was my current fave onto plain tshirts with Tipp-Ex and Sharpies. It really didn't look good, but I guess it gave me some good practice!
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