I always promised myself I would have a fabulous pair of shoes for my college graduation day. After four years of practical sneakers and slouchy boots, no mere shoe would suffice. I wanted something with pizazz. Introducing, The Shoe. Cue jazz hands.
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| When you absolutely, positively have to look fabulous! |
While by no means difficult, this is not a quick project. I worked on these on and off for six days in order to completely coat them in glitter. This is mostly due to my choice of large glitter; a smaller glitter would have required less coats to become opaque. I would suggest searching thrift stores and discount shoe stores like DSW and Famous Footwear to find a cheap pair of shoes.Getting a pair of shoes close to your chosen color of glitter will also reduce the number of coats you have to apply to make the glitter at least appear solid.
Materials:
- Pair of shoes (I got mine on sale for $18 at DSW)
- Blue tape
- Plastic cup
- Mod Podge (the kind that dries shiny)
- Loose glitter
- Brush (you will probably not be able to use this again)
- Exact-O knife
- Optional: lace
- Optional: Krylon Glitter Blast clear sealer
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| Can you tell I got excited and jumped the gun and started before taking this picture? |
2. Tape off the areas of the shoe you don't want to be glitter-fabulous with blue tape.
3. Mix up the Mod Podge and glitter. I used about 1/4 cup of Mod Podge and 1/4 cup of glitter. The mixture should be quite dense with glitter, but not so dense as to make the glue thick and hard to work with.
4. Grab that brush and start painting! Try and stay off the blue tape as much as possible as this will make tape removal easier later on. Trust me. I would give the shoes an initial coat and then go back over with my brush lightly to remove any places were glue might have pooled and disperse any clumps of glitter.
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| On their way! |
4. Between coats I covered my glitter-glue cup (sounds like a bad drink name) with plastic wrap to keep the glue from drying out. If you forgot to cover your cup, just pluck off the top layer of dried Mod Podge and keep using it.
5. Remember when I said that this project wasn't hard, just time consuming? Well, each coat needs to dry for about an hour. Yes, an hour. Don't try to rush this either. It'll just end up making the next coat dry even more slowly. The beauty of Mod Podge is that it becomes clear when it's dry.
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| Voici! |
6. Now paint on coat...
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| One coat. |
... after coat...
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| Two coat. |
... after coat...
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| Red coat. |
... after coat...
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| Blue coat. |
... after coat...
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| Notice how my picture are getting progressively darker? It's midnight. I'm painting glue on shoes at midnight. |
... until you get the desired glitter density. Mine took about 9 or 10 coats. I think. The glue fumes made me lose count. Do this in a ventilated area, people!
7. Now comes the interpretive dance part! I was without camera for several days and missed the next few steps. I will try to explain this as best as I can. The blue tape will more than likely be cemented to your shoe. Take your Exact-O knife and cut along the edge of the blue tape and pull it off. If the glitter-glue starts stretching away from your shoe, gently press it back on.
8. Optional: Apply a layer of Krylon Glitter Blaster clear sealer to make sure the glitter doesn't flake off. I didn't do this and I left a couple flakes of glitter behind, but nothing too bad. The glitter seems to be held on by the Mod Podge reasonably well.
9. Optional: To apply the lace, paint a thick coat of Mod Podge over the toe of the shoe under where the lace would lie. Cut a piece of lace approximately 6 inches long. Center your lace on the shoe and work your way out, pressing to make the lace lie flat on the shoe, leaving the selvage edge off the edge of the shoe. Don't worry about creases and such; they can be cut off later. Paint a second layer of Mod Podge over the lace. When dry, cut off excess lace and any creases that may be standing up.
10. Required: rock those shoes!
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| Six days and so worth it. |
What I learned:
- DO NOT STORE YOUR SHOES TOUCHING EACH OTHER! Do I need to put it in bigger letters? Because I'm that serious. Your shoe will stick together and un-sticking them will pull the glue off. No fun. The Krylon sealer may help with this and I will definitely try it when I make another pair of these shoes.
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