Make Your Own N7 Jacket

Hello Lovely People!

You a fan of Mass Effect?

I altered a leather jacket inspired by the N7 jackets from commander shepard from mass effect

Here is how you transform an old leather jacket into a vamped up N7 Jacket.

Figures 1 and 2 represent the finished project. I don't have a photo of the red and white stripes as a front view.

I made this for some one last summer as a birthday present.

what you need for this project

- Old leather jacket [if you don't have one, you could probably find one at a thrift shop, if a gift make sure you have someone of the same body type to try on the jacket(if bought at a thrift store) to make sure it'll fit the intended party ]

- Red acrylic paint

- White acrylic paint

- Paint brush

- Water

- Sand Paper

- Rubbing alcohol

- Cloth/ Rag

- Ruler

- Wax paper/ butter paper/ tracing paper

- Pencil/pen

- Exacto knife

- Masking tape/ painting edging tape

- Nail polish hardener/ paint sealant

Step 1: Step 1: Prep for Painting

Materials for this step:

- Sand paper (fine is probably better)

- Rubbing alcohol

- Painting tape

- Ruler

- Cloth/ Rag

Step 1: Marking regions to paint

Take your jacket and lay flat as possible with one arm/sleeve out.

Find where the arm meets the neck/shoulder. (the stripes go all the way up the arm and to the shoulders)

If there is a seam on the arm use this as a guideline for your starting point to measure the stripes.

Depending on how wide the sleeves are make a line with the tape on either side of the seam about half the width of the stripes you want.

I made stripes 2 inches wide, so 1 inch on either side of the seam. (fig 1-2)

[Note: when you paint or lay the tape stripes make it as flat as possible without any kinks in the fabric, because if the tape isn't flat the paint may run underneath the tape... if this happens its okay, all you have to do is take some nail polish remover/rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip/cotton swab and remove the extra/undesired paint that ran]

Mark a square on the chest of the jacket for where you want to put the N7 logo

Step 2 : Abrasion of leather surfaces:

Leather isn't the easiest to paint on its own, it requires some preparation.

After you have marked where you want to paint, take your fine sandpaper and scrape off the shininess of the leather jacket.

Once scraped off, take your rubbing alcohol and rag and wipe off the excess dust or material flakes.

Step 2: Step 2: Paint Your Stripes

Materials needed for this step:

- Painting tape

- Red acrylic paint

- Water

- Wide Paint brush

- Nail polish Hardener/ paint sealant

[Note: when you paint or lay the tape stripes make it as flat as possible without any kinks in the fabric, because if the tape isn't flat the paint may run underneath the tape... if this happens its okay, all you have to do is take some nail polish remover/rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip/cotton swab and remove the extra/undesired paint that ran]

Step 1: Preliminary diluted painting

For this step you can't just paint huge globs of paint because of the texture of leather , the paint will crack and flake off

you will have to do a couple layers of watered down red paint. so its more like a damp paste, not too runny or it will run under the tape (to let the paint soak into the leather, if the colour isn't soaking add a small amount more of water)

don't let the paint dry fully, but let sit a couple minutes to soak into the leather and prepare for undiluted paint later.

Lightly (for a lack of a better word) scrunch the painted leather (to prevent cracking of the paint as it dries) then flatten out again

Add a couple of layers of diluted paint (fig 1).

Step 2: Full painting

Paint the stripes with full acrylic paint in even strokes, (otherwise there may be streaks, if streaks occur you just might have to make more layers until desired colour is obtained)

Again scrunch leather so it doesn't crack as it dries, again don't dry it fully but mostly dry before you add another layer

Paint as many layers as needed to create the desired vibrancy of the red.

Let the paint dry fully.

Slowly peel off the tape, if you find that the paint has run a bit use nail polish remover/ rubbing alcohol to take off the undesired paint (fig 2)

Step 3: Seal and shine

Cover the stripes with nail polish hardener / sealant to prevent future cracks

[Note: nail polish hardener is what i used, but paint sealant should work also, if not better. side note: the nail polish hardener will make the colour a lot more vibrant and red, and shiny (see fig 3)]

Step 4: white stripes

Repeat the previous steps:

Marking lines with tape but this time tape both the red stripes(tape the red stripes so the white doesn't bleed/run onto the red) and about a half inch to an inch away from the red stripes on either side (the white stripes are smaller than the red )

abrasion, rubbing alcohol wipe clean, and preliminary painting and painting steps are all pretty much the same as the red.

(fig 4)

Step 3: Step 3: Painting the Logo

materials for this step:

- Pen/pencil

- Wax paper/tracing paper/ plastic sheets

- Printed out logo of appropriate size/ drawn logo(referring to logo)

- Exacto knife/ cutting board or surface you don't care if you cut it

- Tape

- Red acrylic paint/ Paint pen

- White acrylic paint/ Paint pen

Step 1: make your stencil

On tracing paper or plastic sheets (the latter is probably better because the tracing paper is floppy and more prone to paint running) Draw your Logo, with reference to the logo picture, or by tracing over a printed image

(scale up to the appropriate size you want on the shirt)

Cut out the logo with an exacto knife

[Note: For this step you have to be careful when cutting out the letters because if there are any nicks/ slices in the tracing paper as it might show when you remove your stencil]

Step 2: Prep of location

If you haven't already outline a square on the chest where you want the logo to go, see abrasion and prep steps (they are the same, sand paper, and rubbing alcohol)

Tape the stencil to the area of application

Step 3: Painting the logo

there are a couple options for painting the logo,

option a) if you are confident it won't run, then brush white paint in the N and the 7 (both diluted and then full)

and the red paint in the little red symbol of the logo (also diluted and then full)

[Note: if letters are closer together you may not want to do option a , although it will work, if it bleeds/runs it might be harder to remove excess/ unwanted paint]

option b) if you want to be more careful, don't dilute as much and make small strokes and use plastic stencil.

option c) the most careful is the following option: get paint pens and draw/fill in the stencils, the only downside is that the colour of the red might not match the rest of the red, but it is neater.

its a smaller area so scrunch --- i don't think scrunch is actually right, twist and fold/ pull/ stretch might work better.

I found that the white was more prone to cracking. but that could be because I was using older paint. but definitely paint with nail polish hardener or sealant for the logo

and voila you are done (fig 1)