Classic Lego Space Flight Jacket

Create the design that you would like to apply to the jacket. For each color in your design, cut a stencil out of cardstock. You can use simple tools like a pencil and a hobby knife for this step, or take more of a high-tech approach. For our design, we used high-resolution pictures of Lego bricks to model the logo in Inkscape (inkscape.org), and laser-cut the cardstock stencils. You may find it helpful to use your cardstock cutouts as mock ups to see how they will look on the jacket in a variety of sizes and positions.

Position the stencil for the base (lowest) layer of your painting where you want it to go on the jacket and gently fix it in place with blue painter’s tape. Place a board under the jacket back so that you have a smooth and flat workspace.

Use the leather preparer and deglazer solution to strip the shiny outer finish off of the leather inside the stencil. Doing a thorough job of this takes about 30 minutes of hard scrubbing with a washcloth, leaving the cloth thoroughly blackened and that area of the jacket still black, but with a matte finish.

CAUTION: Wear gloves for this step — you probably don’t need to strip the finish off of your fingers.

After the leather dries from the prep stage, it’s time to begin painting. Angelus recommends making the first layer thin and allowing it to dry thoroughly before adding the subsequent 2-3 layers necessary to reach full opacity. We used white for our base layer, even under the parts that will be red or gold in the final painting. The brush strokes are quite visible and the opacity is marginal with only a single layer.

This is the easiest layer of painting, because — with the exception of black areas like our little triangle — you can just paint over all of the areas that have that initial matte appearance.

Once the paint is dry, indicate where the red and gold should go by lightly scoring the white paint while tracing the pattern with a stencil. Using those (barely visible) marks as guides, paint the first layers of red and gold. The opacity should be noticeably improved in those areas. Let the paint dry for at least 30 minutes before doing the next layer, and alternate between adding more white and colored layers.

After four layers of white and three each in red and gold, our white and colored areas were well defined, bright, and distinct.

NOTE: Painting the interior curves to appear smooth takes a fair amount of time and steady hands.

Our design called for light and dark metallic gold. However, Angelus only offers a single (but gorgeous) shade of metallic gold paint, which is alternately referred to as “Antique Gold” or just “Gold.” The good news is that you can custom mix your own paint colors. To make a darker gold paint, simply mix in a few drops of black.

For low-contrast accents like our craters — dark gold atop regular gold — a single layer of additional stencil-guided paint works well. Touch it up, as needed using both the lower and upper paint colors.

Allow the paints to dry overnight, and add the final top coat — a thin and colorless acrylic finish that dries clear. The finisher is available in five different luster levels, from matte to glossy. We used “Satin,” but found it to be glossier than the rest of the jacket, so we’d recommend “Flat Top,” listed as having the lowest sheen. Apply 2 coats of the finish and allow it to dry overnight.