DIY: Turn jeans into distressed studded shorts

Hi guys! This is my first DIY project. I've been loving the distressed denim short look for a while now but just can't afford Topshop prices:

Moto Gold Studded Bleach shorts, £35.00 here from Topshop

I decided to try and make some of my own for a much more affordable price. Here goes...

What you'll need:

A pair of jeans or shorts

Scissors

A nail file, tweezers or sandpaper

A ruler

Some other shorts as a guideline

I found these GAP flare jeans for £4.80 in my local charity shop. Bargain. I opted for a Size 10 as these normally fit. I would probably recommend going a size above you usually get, as mine definitely didn't fit, boo.

These are some shorts I bought from Urban Outfitters for about £35 that were Levi jeans cut down. So disappointed in these but I used the shape as a guideline.

I went a few inches below these ones just to be careful as you don't want to cut off more short than necessary. I drew the line across the jeans with a pen and a ruler, and did the same on the other side.

Once you've cut both sides you should end up with something like this:

These are a bit of a strange length but don't worry you'll be cutting them down, freying and generally distressing them anyway so it really doesn't matter.

I used some other Topshop hotpants as a guidance as to how I wanted to cut the shorts a bit further.

You can see here that the Topshop shorts cut is diagonal so I copied that but made the shorts longer as these are ridiculously short.

When you're happy with the length (I recommend trying them on lots) it's time to start distressing. Here on the back pocket I cut four slits across the jeans.

I then roughly brushed the slits with my nail file to create a freyed effect. You can do this as much as you desire. I did this all over the front too. Go wild!

I bought some 10mm Pyramid studs from this Ebay seller here. They're about £3.50 for 50 silver pyramid studs of this size.

I put a line of studs across the front pocket. Putting the studs through is really easy, once they go through the fabric you just have to fold the pins over. I recommend doing this with tweezers so you don't stab your fingers like I frequently do.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out considering I am hopeless at art. Tomorrow I'm going to bleach them and make them a light pink or blue ombre colour. 

What do you think?

What colour shall I ombre them?