DIY: Shoe Painting

Earlier this month I painted my shoes.  Weird, I know.  Nick was way skeptical of me painting shoes.  And I was too.  He called them "hobo shoes" :)  

I like to think they look better than hobo shoes.  

Anyway, 

 So I bought these shoes last year from land's end.  They were pretty expensive.  I bought them as silver, sparkly shoes.

 But as you can see them, they are no longer silver.  Or sparkly.  Everything has rubbed off of these shoes and they were just "ek".

 I also have needed black flat or shoes I could wear with black outfits.  I had been losely looking for new shoes and just hadn't found anything I liked.

Bottom line was that I had these shoes and was going to have to pitch them because they didn't look good enough to wear out.  So I figured I might as well try to paint them.  If they turned out horrible I could still just throw them away and not be out anything.

 First thing, I scrubbed them down with cleaning wipes.  These were the wipes I had on hand.  I hate them, do not buy them.  They smell like funky, monkey butt.  Ugh, at least I used a few of them up on this project :)

 I then used masking tape to tape off the section I was wanting to paint.  I just eyed my tape lines and then pushed down really, really hard.

 These were the paints I used.  The blank paint was less than a dollar and the glitter paint was about $1.50.

 I used one of the kids paint pallets to paint with...it seemed to work really well.  I used a foam brush rather than a regular paintbrush.  It seemed to work pretty well as far as not leaning lines.

 I painted it this way towards the toe, then I would paint from side to side.  I used 4 coats of paint to make sure they had a nice layer of paint on them.  I did this over the course of a morning and afternoon.  I'd just come back to them every now and then and add a coat of paint.

In my last coat of paint I added the glittler black paint into the regular black paint.  I did this so it would give it a little bit of sheen and so the paint would coordinate with any remaining shimmer left on the shoes.

And ta-da!  Here is the end result of my work.  I think they look pretty good.  They have kind of a mod look  to them and paired with jeans the black and silver just peak out from the front of my pants.  I should add that     before I removed the paint I mod-podged the shoes, over the paint to seal them.

I've worn them about 5 times since I've worn them and have had absolutely no problems with them.  Last week we went to a murder mystery at a local mansion/museum and I wore them to that.  It was absolutely pouring and to tell the truth I was kind of worried. I was scared my shoes would start to run and then there would be huge black streaks behind us on these gorgeous, expensive rugs.  But they were fine, everything looked great, and I still haven't had any trouble.

These by far are not shoes I wear every day, so I have no idea of the wear they would take on a day to day basis.  But they have been great for a sometime shoe.

If you decide to paint your shoes, I'd love to see pictures of them!  It's so fun and the possibilities are endless!