I decided that the hoodie I bought for Elizabeth needed a bit of fancying up! I’ve been watching a lot of Rattus Rattus on Youtube and they do a ton of customization of both doll stuff and people stuff so I felt both inspired and brave. Usually, what keeps me from trying something is the fear that it will all go wrong and I’ll be upset, frustrated, and out of pocket for whatever the cost was.

The fabric paint that I bought online to add a jack-o-lantern face to a tank top (thanks, Rabbit!) also came with a few stencils, so I reasoned that I couldn’t get into too much trouble if I used a stencil. I knew I wanted to add something purple, probably also with some glitter.

Here’s the basic black hoodie I bought online, with some cardboard pushed inside it to keep the fabric from bleeding. The butterfly stencil I chose (very early 2000s!) is ready to go and just needed to be peeled off the backing and stuck onto the hoodie. These stencils have a sticky back, which made it much easier! Elizabeth is supervising from a safe distance.

Stencil in place and ready to go! I think I picked this one because it reminds me of high school! I should make a human-sized one for myself.

Here’s the paint process in action. It’s nothing too complicated. I think I ended up using three layers of paint. This stuff dried pretty quickly which meant that this didn’t take very long at all! I’ve also got my glitter picked out and ready to go!

I did end up only putting glitter on the edges of the butterfly wings, because I thought it looked cuter but this is just personal preference. I kept the stencil on for this and used a paintbrush to apply the glitter only in the places where I wanted it. I don’t think I could have been so neat with it if I’d just dumped the glitter ~ I probably would have ended up covering the whole thing! Which would have also looked nice, I’m sure. It just wasn’t what I wanted.

I let the stencil dry all afternoon because I wasn’t in a hurry. I’m not sure exactly how fast the paint dried, but I doubt it took longer than an hour since my stencil was so small.

And here you can see the finished hoodie on Elizabeth! I’m very pleased with how it came out, I think it looks very sweet! I love that the paint isn’t perfect, I like it when things look unique or even hand-made!

In the end, I’m glad I took the plunge to customize this for my doll! She looks so pretty in it and now the hoodie makes me smile whenever I see it!