Floral Shoe Makeover

First let me say two things. One, that I have a lot of trouble finding cute shoes that fit me and second that this project was an experiment. In my search for cute shoes I often go to the anthropologie catalog which is where I found some really cute floral booties. But alas, I am way to thrifty ( cheap?) to purchase pretty much anything from my beloved anthro. That’s when I decided to tackle a pair of shoes I already own in this floral shoe makeover.

Above is my inspiration photo – a past season anthro catalog, my old shoe, and some beautiful floral tissue paper from Staples.  I didn’t get a photo of both shoes together because I was actually going to get rid of them and had already started to paint the other shoe by the time I thought this project to be post worthy- lesson learned.

Supplies:

Pair of shoes you can paint
Acrylic paint
Paint brush
Floral tissue
Decoupage glue

I used navy blue craft paint and a very small brush to carefully paint around the brown zigzag trim of the shoe and a larger brush to fill in the larger areas.  I did three thin layers of paint so that there would not be any streaks from the paint brush.

Let your painted shoe dry thoroughly. Once the shoes where painted I carefully cut out some flowers from the tissue paper and lined them up in the order I wanted them to be one the shoe.  I made sure I had enough flowers to do both shoes.

Arrange the flowers until you have an arrangement you like and lay them out for the gluing stage of the project.

Using decoupage glue I brushed the area of the shoe where I wanted the flower and carefully applied the tissue flower smoothing out the wrinkles with a layer of glue using the brush or my finger.  It’s okay to have a couple of creases, just flatten them out best as you can.  I kept working around the shoe adding flowers until both shoes were completed.

Once the flowers were dry I completely covered the painted area of the shoes with a sealer coat of glue.  I used mod podge hard coat to give them some durability.

I think these came out beautiful.  The tissue is thin and subtle enough so that the shoes are not too bright or showy which was what I was going for.  I think this technique would work for most any type shoe.  Maybe this would be a good project for that pair of shoes you love but have seen better days.