This weekend I decided to give my summer shoes a makeover. This is already the second time I've done this. Someone gave me the shoes second hand. They're made of a soft faux-leather material, which was black when I got them. Since I already had 2 pairs of black shoes suitable for summer, I decided to take some inspiration from Amy March in Little Women, who painted her boots a lovely shade of light blue because she was too poor to buy new ones. :)
First time round, I chose blue also, because a lot of my clothes are blue to match my eyes. I used acrylic paint, which I knew would not last long, and sure enough it cracked pretty quickly with the movement of the flexible material. Here's a picture of how they looked right after the first job:
This time I decided to do something a little more fancy, and also with more neutral colors to match more outfits. First I painted the shoes cream, and then I mixed a little brown and yellow into the pot and did the trim in a tan-gold color. Then I used a technique I learned long ago in American Girl magazine: I laid book tape (an extremely strong double-sided tape used in bookbinding) along the accent strip and the button and then sprinkled a mix of beads and glass glitter over it.
I knew this would likely hold up to wear even worse than the paint, so I considered carefully what I could use to fix it in place. I finally decided on a bottle of acrylic varnish that I had. I gave four coats to the beaded areas and two coats to the rest of the painted areas. Then I set them out on the window ledge so the sun could fix them well.
Hopefully they'll last a little longer this time. At least till the end of summer. :)