So, I had this bright idea a while back. Leopard skin clothes. Not real leopard, obviously, but you know, the pattern. There was this theme party coming up, and I thought, “Yeah, I’m gonna make my own.” Seemed like a laugh, and how hard could it be, right? Just a few spots on some fabric.
I went off to the shops, full of beans. Grabbed some plain beige fabric – cotton, I think. And a couple of tubes of fabric paint, black and a sort of muddy brown. Figured I was all set to become a fashion designer overnight.
My first master plan was to just paint the spots on freehand. I saw some pictures online, looked easy enough. Well, let me tell you, my hand is not as steady as I thought. The spots I painted looked less like leopard print and more like… well, like I’d accidentally dropped the paintbrush a bunch of times. Some were big blobs, some were tiny squiggles. It was a mess. A total mess.
Okay, plan A out the window. “Stencils!” I thought. “That’s the professional way.” So I spent a good couple of hours drawing leopard spot shapes on some card and then cutting them out with a tiny craft knife. My fingers were aching by the end of it. Seriously, so fiddly.
Armed with my amazing stencils, I tried again on a new bit of fabric. Laid the stencil down, dabbed the paint on. Lifted it up. And the paint had bled. Everywhere. Under all the edges. It looked like a very blurry, very sad attempt at leopard print. Even worse than the freehand disaster, if that’s possible.
At this point, I was getting a bit stressed. The party wasn’t ages away. My grand ideas for leopard spots had produced nothing but ruined fabric. I tried a few different ways, really:
- Hand-painting like I was some kind of modern artist. That was a big nope.
- Those fancy stencils I poured my soul into cutting. Even bigger nope, more like a blotchy mess.
- I even thought about using different sized bottle caps to make rings. Still looked weird.
I was about ready to give up and just wear a bin bag. Then I remembered my mate, Alex. Alex is usually pretty good with crafty stuff, always making things. So I gave Alex a call, explained my leopard-print nightmare.
Alex came over, took one look at my paint-smeared fabric and the sad, bleeding stencils, and just started laughing. Not exactly the moral support I was hoping for, but alright. After having a good chuckle, Alex suggested potato printing. Yeah, like we used to do in primary school. Cut a potato in half, carve a shape, dip it in paint.
So there we were, two grown adults in my kitchen, hacking away at potatoes, trying to carve leopard spot shapes. The kitchen looked like a potato massacre had happened. We got paint everywhere. On the table, on the floor, on us. We tried stamping the potato spots onto yet another piece of fabric. Some of them actually looked okay-ish! For about five minutes. Then the potato started to get mushy, the shapes got all weird, and the paint was either too thick or too thin. The fabric ended up looking like it had some kind of strange, spotty disease.
That was the final straw. The fabric was beyond saving. I was covered head to toe in black and brown paint. Alex was still finding the whole thing hilarious, which, in hindsight, probably made it a bit funnier for me too, eventually.
We just gave up. There was no way I was making any leopard skin clothes that day, or any day soon by the looks of it. The party was the next night.
So, what did I do? I made a mad dash to a cheap clothes shop the morning of the party. Rummaged through the sale racks. And I found it. The most gloriously tacky, shiny, polyester leopard print shirt you’ve ever seen. It was about two sizes too big for me and felt like wearing a plastic bag. But it was leopard print.
I wore that shirt to the party. Got a lot of comments, mostly people asking if I’d mugged a very unlucky, very flamboyant cat. It was awful. And brilliant.
So, my big adventure into DIY leopard skin clothes? A complete and utter failure in terms of making anything wearable myself. But, you know, Alex and I had a right laugh making that mess. And that terrible, shiny shirt? Definitely got people talking. Sometimes, you just learn it’s easier to buy the cheap, ready-made stuff instead of trying to be too clever with potatoes and paint.
