Unfortunately, I didn’t really intend for this to be a tutorial, so I didn’t take a lot of pictures. However, I have no tutorial ready, and, due to my car breaking down and me having to buy a new one, cosplay money will be a little tight. So, I wanted to give you guys something! So, in case you decide not to buy patches to sew onto your AOT/SNK jacket, here is a short tutorial for painting them.
First, get yourself an image. This is the one I used.
You are going to want to resize this. I used photoshop. Basically, I measure the height against the back of my jacket, and photoshop input in a corresponding width. Did the same for the arm and pocket patches. You need to print out 2 of each size. Now, you are going to need an exacto knife and a cutting board. On one of the large ones and one of the small, you want to cut out the background.
On the other copy, you want to cut out the dark feathers. After you paint the blue, you will then cut out the white feathers. But trust me, it’s easier to cut out only the blue ones first. Center your background stencil on your jacket and paint grey. Then, outline in white. It should look like this:
Once dry, lie the stencil that has the blue feathers cut out on top of this, making sure to line everything up as well as possible. If you have glue tape, I recommend using it. I did not, so I kind of free hand painted it. For the large one, I used the stencil to paint the feathers. For the small one, I used a fabric pen and traced the feather pattern out, that way I could use one stencil for all 3 patches. Paint.
Let this dry. Once dry, use your exacto knife and cut out the white feathers. Now you will be able to tell which ones are white because the blue ones will have paint, or pen, around the inner edges. See why I waited to cut out the white feathers? Line it up as best you can and paint. If any paint bleeds through, you can touch it up later (like on my big patch).
Let dry. Do any touch ups you need to do now. Once you are satisfied, you need to outline everything in black. For the back patch, I painted the outline. Because the pocket and shoulder patches were so small, I used a permanent marker and traced everything.
For the small patches, I then cut them out and sewed them on.
And that’s it!
Things I learned doing this project:
- It takes multiple coats of paint to get the color strong and bold. Be prepared to redo the areas a few times at each step.
- Corduroy is a pain to paint!
- Painting on a scrap piece of fabric, cutting out, then sewing onto your jacket is probably a better idea than painting directly onto your jacket. Wish I would have thought of it before doing the back patch, but hindsight is 20/20
Mine is not perfectly and meticulously done because I plan on remaking my jacket some point in the future. My current one is a men’s medium button up corduroy that is about 3 sizes too big. I swim in it. So, I would like to make one that is my size. Also, their jackets aren’t corduroy. This worked because I needed a jacket, for cheap (yay thrift store find), and relatively quickly. But it will be updated. And, I’ve ordered patches, beautiful, hand embroidered patches, that will be put on the new jacket.
Until next time, keep cosplaying! Any questions, comments, or request, leave them below!
Anna Stasia Cosplay 