Some DIY Shoes

You may or may not have noticed, but I've added a DIY button to our little family here at Blush. So far it contains a few beauty DIY's, plus my jewelry organizer Diy. The thing is, diy runs deeps in my blood. I come from a long line of 'I can do it myself"!  Or maybe that's just me and my dad, but either way, I can't help myself. So instead of keeping them to myself, I will try to share them with you folks. At least the stuff that pertains to beauty and fashion and the like.

So today I'm going to show you how this happened....

These are the shoes that I wore for Halloween, and probably will in life as my costumes tend to end up there.
It was all very easy. I would say a 1 paintbrush on the DIY scale of 5 paintbrushes but is slightly time consuming because of paint drying time.

Supplies:

Nail Polish Remover

Cotton

Some paint brushes ( I found the cheap regular brushes to work best for me with this paint)

Fabric Paint

• fabric paint is flexible, which is why it works best in this situation. If you were doing just a heel or part of the shoe that isn't in an area that is constantly flexing, then you could get away with using a regular acrylic paint
• If you're painting real leather, invest in some leather paint like Angelus.
• The Tulip paint I used said 'matte' but it actually contained some glitter in it, so it made it a bit chunky. But it was the color I wanted. I would suggest their regular Soft Fabric Paints or going with the Slick. 

Shoes to be painted. (mine are a fake leather pair from Payless)

Bowl of candy optional, but totally advised. 

STEP 1. Using the cotton, clean all the surface to be painted with the polish remover. Try to make sure there is no dust left on the shoe

STEP 2: Start painting! Start with nice thin coats.  

This is a photo of the first coat. Yes, it's very thin....this is going to take some time.  Give some drying time between coats. 

Around coat 4

Around coat 7 or 9

 From here on out I started layering it on much heavier. Fabric paint dries flat so your brushstrokes won't be seen very much so it's ok to use a heavy hand now. 

And somewhere around coat 25 you get this!

STEP 4: Clean up any paint that made it onto the soles or areas you didn't want painted. I personally just scraped away at it with my nails because the soles were rubber and the paint came off ok that way. You can use the nailpolish remover and some cotton or q-tips, or you could avoid this step by using some masking tape or painters tape to cover the areas you don't want painted beforehand. I mean, if you wanna be fancy with it. 

STEP 5: Let the shoes 'cure'. You want to let the paint sit for about 3 days, if possible, to really make sure the paint is dry and ready to be worn. You can also hit them with some acrylic sealer, but I haven't done those to mine just yet, but I'm mulling it over. 

STEP 6: Wear in public like a one bad DIY mofo!