Pretty in Pink

This shoe came about because I wanted to create a party shoe in which I could dance all night without wincing. So I started with a sport shoe and experimented. First came the Pearlescent Magenta paint by Lumiere. Then I glued on stretchy black lace and curving strips of sparkly leather. The final touch? A handful of big magenta Swarovski crystals.

• Cost of materials    

• Level of difficulty    

• Patience required    

Gypsy Summer

In this pair of sandals, each strap gets a different treatment. These are painted, stenciled, and highlighted in a dozen complementary and contrasting colors of gleaming Lumiere paint. The foot bed was painted, too, since it is so visible. The final touch? A short strip of beading--Bali silver tube beads and freshwater pearls-- laid over a line of stitching on the toe straps.

Old-Fashioned Girl

I love taking a traditional design and giving it a little nontraditional pizzazz. In the case of this wingtip boot, I used a technique called color blocking, a fancy name for painting different clearly marked-off sections of an object in different colors.

Here I painted over two of the once-black sections with a gleaming Metallic Russet by Lumiere and a more muted shade of Crimson tinted with a drop or two of black. A double strand of copper chain hangs freely from the outer side, curving below a little copper butterfly in flight. The crowning touch is a wide ombre ribbon used as a shoelace.