Painted Face Dress DIY With Trendy Red Boots
I stumbled upon this amazing face dress when surfing Anthropologie’s website a few months ago.
Immediately I knew I was not willing to pay out the $450 US that was required to own such a cool piece. Instead, I thought I’d DIY that sucker.
Painted Face Dress DIY
I already had a black slip dress from a few years back.
The Anthropologie dress that provided the inspiration for this project is beaded and that is what I thought I wanted to try to do.
These were the materials I put together to do the project initially.
Scratch that idea.
Don’t bother with all those beads, it was a nightmare.
It took FOREVER to sew on the beads and the fabric puckered horribly. The whole thing looked very unprofessional. I finished the nose and hated it. Removing the beads afterwards took almost as much time as sewing them on. ARGH!!! The plight of the DIY’er.
Start over.
Instead, I decided to simply paint directly on the dress. So much easier!
Materials required:
Black slip dress, acrylic paints in multiple colours of your choosing (you can buy fabric paint but I don’t think it is necessary) and a white pencil crayon for sketching.
Method:
- Sketch your design directly onto the dress with the white pencil.
- Once you are satisfied with your sketch paint directly on the dress.
- Be sure to place a piece of cardboard under the area you are painting otherwise the paint will bleed through to the other side of the dress.
- You can heat set the paint by simply putting it in the dryer afterwards however it has been my experience that once you paint that acrylic onto fabric it’s there forever.
- The dress is fine to be washed, removing any white pencil sketch marks that remain.
I’m really pleased with how it turned out.
I painted the initial sketch with just one line.
Afterwards I decided to go back around and paint small dots on the inside and outside of those lines mimicking the beading and thickening the image.
I’ve layered a turtleneck under the slip dress as we are well into cooler cold temperatures now.
(groan)
Oh how I hate winter.
The vintage red boots are for sale in my Etsy store FYI.

I’ve got a little collection of 1980s-90s red boots in my store now as they are so on trend.
Besides…who doesn’t like wearing red boots?
They sass up whatever you’re wearing, like an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence.
Plus it is well known fact that wearing powerful red Super Woman boots means you can jump tall buildings in a single bound.
Or in my case, chubby pugs.
Same difference.
I’m thinking about shortening the dress a bit. It looks fine when I’m wearing tall boots or when I stretch but I can’t go around stretching all day.
Unless there are a bunch of 70% dark chocolate bars hanging from the ceiling.
Yeah, I’d stretch all day long for that no problemo.
Have you ever painted on clothing?
If so, did it turn out?
Here are some other DIY projects I’ve created by painting on fabric; painted jean jackets, painted jeans, doodled jeans, painted t-shirt.
Linking up with the lovely Patti over at Visible Monday.
Wardrobe Malfunction The Perils Of Thrifting
I’ve had a few weird things happen while thrifting. There have been vintage dresses that were near impossible to remove from my body without having to relocate both of my shoulders. I’ve had near panic attacks during such episodes where I fear running out of the fitting room, a deformed thrift monster, dress stuck, arms pinned firmly above my head, a headless, blind, trapped, terrified creature bumping into walls all the while screaming,
“GET THIS F’ING THING OFF ME!!!“
There have been dresses that create a quadro boob, getting stuck just below or above the boob shelf, refusing to budge. Thank heavens boobs are adjustable, although that was far from a pain free removable as I remember and I needed help from a friend to escape.
Of course I’ve had the occasional zipper that gets stuck in which case I’m not above coming out of the fitting room and asking for help. Shame is a useless emotion when thrifting. Get over it.
I’ve had stuck zippers on skirts that had to be cut off me in the fitting room at Anthropologie in NYC by two hottie guys.
Most recently I had a fight with a pair of boots.
These boots to be precise.
My Wardrobe Malfunction – The Perils Of Thrifting
They look innocent enough right?
I tried them on and although they were a titch tight on my man-cows (very large calves) it wasn’t worse than any other boots I’ve tried on before.
That is until I tried to remove them at which point one of boots decided they weren’t prepared to let me go. The zipper was stuck. As in, it won’t budge, at all, stuck. I tried and tried in the fitting room to move it a little bit. Nope. Not moving.
I came out of the fitting room after trying for five minutes on my own and breathlessly exclaimed,
“I have a “boot emergency!”
The cashier seemed totally non plussed by the whole thing,
“Okay honey,” she cooed and then went on about her business.
Ummm….hello?! That means I need help lady!
So I tried again this time with a bit more force,
“Like, no, I need help. My foot is stuck and it won’t come out. For real!“
Suddenly realizing that I was beginning to panic she clued into my predicament and searched around for some pliers for me to try.
I tried.
Nope, not helping.
Eventually after watching me helplessly struggle on my own for another five minutes she finally gave in and decided to assist me.
She was a considerable woman and she couldn’t make the zipper budge.
By this time some other customers empathizing over my predicament also tried their hand at moving the zipper.
Nope.
One then suggested that I might consider buying the boots only so I could cut it off my leg.
Not an option.
It wasn’t my fault the zipper got stuck!
I wasn’t giving up.
One gal gave it her best shot, she was making some headway and then the entire zipper pull just snapped off completely. She fell backwards with the force.
No one was happy.
I was really stuck now.
Let’s be clear, I did not like the boots enough to wear them the rest of my life.
My determination set in. Another customer agreed to tug at the boot while I endeavoured to mentally force my leg and foot to shrink all the while pulling in the opposite direction.
The pleather did stretch some, my foot was now painfully wedged in the narrow ankle section of the boot.
Progress!
The friendly woman that was helping me decided it wasn’t a good idea to continue when some other customer mentioned that she might break my foot in the process.
Nice.
Thanks for the vote of confidence!
It was left to me, alone.
I was determined. I didn’t want that pair of boots. Heck I didn’t even like them anymore, I despised those damn boots.
I was covered in sweat.
It was going to happen.
Grunting, pulling, straining and tightening.
It.
was.
going.
to.
come.
off.
Dammit.
I still had one more thrift store to visit. I’ll be damned if some stupid boot is going to mess up my thrifting schedule!
I painfully and ever-so-slowly inched my way out of that boot, pulling out my shoulders and neck in the process.
It took about fifteen minutes to stretch the pleather enough to free my foot.
Just another day at the thrift store my friends.
No one told me this would be a dangerous profession.
Oh and here’s an outfit I wore. No wardrobe malfunctions with any of it thankfully!


Have you ever had a wardrobe malfunction while shopping?
If so, what happened?
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