How to Make an Ugly Christmas Sweater

Last night was the Coulter Christmas Party which featured an Ugly Sweater Contest at the request of Robert and myself! Normally we would have raided a closet for a holiday classic or shopped Goodwill, but this year we decided to get a little crazy and make them ourselves. It paid off! Robert won! So here is my Problem Half Solved Step-by-Step guide to the perfect Christmas sweater monstrosity...

Step One: Choose your design. You can either make reindeer or a Christmas tree. I rolled with the reindeer, so let's start with that one. First part of making a Rudolf inspired work of art is to make the reindeer's face, so paint the bottom of your foot brown. 

Step Two: Squish the painted foot onto the front of your sweater of choice. I chose a $6 long sleeved t-shirt I found in the little boy's section of Wal-Mart. It worked perfectly, but please make sure to put cardboard between the shirt layers or the brown paint will go right through! Also have some plan of attack on getting to the tub so you can wash the paint off... And take your wedding ring off before you paint your hands to make the antlers on your reindeer!

Step Three: Once your lady reindeer is complete, have your hubby repeat steps one and two for the man-friend reindeer companion.

Meanwhile... To make your Christmas tree design, make a pyramid of green handprints all over the front of another sweater type garment of choice. Bonus points if it's off-center! 

Step Four: Before the paint dries, sprinkle liberal amounts of gaudy gold glitter all over both designs, concentrating on the reindeer antlers. Prepare to be vacuuming up glitter for the rest of the week and finding that it has spread to the most random locations. As Mary said at the party, "Glitter is most definitely the herpes of craft supplies." It's well worth it though. No ugly Christmas sweater is complete without some sheen. Your carpet will recover eventually. 

Step Five, complete the look with black puffy paint accents, a red pom-pom nose for Rudolf, googly glue-on eyes, coy little reindeer smiles, and a nice purple bow to identify the tiny reindeer as a lady and not just... well... little.

Meticulously glue pom-poms all over the tree to represent ornaments, and use a cookie cutter to trace and color in a beautiful yellow puffy paint star.

Step Six: Let dry overnight and then show off your handiwork. 

If you really want to give your sweater an edge, add a surprise for the back! A chain of random horse pictures seemed to do the trick for Robert. Please take note of the insane horse fighting picture on the left. Hysterical!

Step Seven: Show off your trophy! 

With less than one week before Christmas, I hope your shopping is done and your sweaters are uglier than ever!