life of the party story behind the sweater

"How do you make your ugly Christmas sweaters?" That's a question we get asked a lot, so we wanted to take you behind the scenes to show you how we go from initial concept to fully produced Christmas sweater. Today we're going to be looking at Life of the Party

Concept

Christmas is a time for friends, family, for spending time together… and it’s also the best time of the year for puns. As an Ugly Christmas sweater company, we do our part every year to contribute to the lexicon of great holiday themed puns. We’d had “Life of the Party” on our list for a while now, and were excited to bring it to life.

life of the party notes

Here’s our initial inspo graphic and notes. We imagined Jesus crowd surfing at a concert, his head tipped back, loving every minute.

Sketch

The first step in the design process is to create a sketch. This way we can make adjustments before we get too far down the road.

life of the party sketch
The first draft is pretty basic, but let us know right away that we were on the right track.

Front Panel Design

After the sketch was approved, we moved on to the full front panel design.

life of the party 1

life of the party 2

We had two different color schemes to choose between, but decided to go with the black one to better represent the concert vibe.

life of the party 3

Finalized Design

Once we finished the front panel design, we designed the sleeves to look like falling confetti.

life of the party sleeves

Then we put everything together to complete the sweater.

life of the party full design

And there you have it! That's the story behind our Life of the Party sweater.