How to Paint and Embellish Your Shoes

Painting
Doing Fabric Collage
Finding Great Embellishments
Attaching Embellishments & Trim

Painting

When it comes to painting shoes, the key is to buy the right kind and buy the best. The right kind of paint is one that is made for the surface you are painting. My favorite paint for leather (and the “manmade material” that some inexpensive shoes are made from) is Lumiere, made by a company called Jacquard. It covers in the fewest number of coats, rarely shows brush marks, and has a wonderful gleam to it.

You can buy a starter kit of Lumiere paints (called an "Exciter Pack") and individual bottles at my Sassy Feet store. You can also buy a bottle of what's called Neopaque Black, which is another Jaquard paint that will work on leather, to touch up the soles of your shoes if you get any of the Lumiere on them.

Preparing the Surface

Before painting, gently clean your leather shoes with rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball. If you are working on manmade material, use acetone (from the hardware store) instead. No preparation is needed for fabric shoes, except they should be clean.

Finishing Touches

After painting, on leather or manmade material,  use a brush or cotton ball to daub on a coat of Future clear acrylic floor wax. This is what the manufacturer recommends for sealing Lumiere and Neopaque paints on leather or manmade materials. As for painted fabric, no sealing is necessary unless you will someday want to toss them in the washer. In that case, heat-seal the paint by using a hair dryer or tossing them in a commercial dryer.

Reverse Stenciling

What do you do if you want to paint designs on your shoes, but you're not the least artistic? Try what I call "reverse stenciling."  I used this technique on the shoe called Good Morning, Paris.

First  I painted the whole shoe with Lumiere Pearlescent White. I let it dry for several days so the paint would have time to cure. Then I pressed on little stickers, in this case fleur-de-lis. Next I painted the whole shoe Pearlescent Magenta, on top of the stickers and all. When the pink paint was completely dry, I carefully pulled off the stickers (I used the tip of an Exacto knife to lift an edge) to reveal the white- painted fleur-de-lis shapes beneath.  To complete the shoe, I glued on the ribbon edging and stiched on the enamel disk (see below for gluing and stitching tips).

You can do “reverse stenciling” using any sticker that has a simple, stong silhouette. In my collection, I have stickers shaped like stars, martini glasses, dots, cats, geckos, sharks, and alphabet letters. You can even make your own stickers using a craft punch and an inexpensive little Xyron sticker maker (available at craft stores).

 

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Doing Fabric Collage

Using the right glues, you can collage fabric pieces (I recommend using quiliting cottons) onto shoes made of leather, manmade leather, or fabric (like canvas sneakers). I've written a tutorial on how to do this, and it's available in the Sassy Feet store. Click here for more information.

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Finding Great Embellishments

You’ll find wonderful chains, charms, beads, ribbon, fringe, appliqués, fur, feathers, flowers, and other incredibly fun and inspirational embellishments at all kinds of stores. But if you just want to get your creative juice going and buy whatever pleases your eye, here are places to look for just some of the hundreds of things you can put on your shoes to make them sassy!

Five Tips on Buying Embellishments

20 Kinds of Stores & the Treasures You Can Find

How Much to Buy?

Attaching Embellishments and Trim

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Gluing Things On

If you want your embellishments to stay on your shoes, you have to use the right glue. Choose a glue that will dry clear and flexible AND that's formulated to work with both of the materials you are gluing: the leather (or manmade materials) of the shoe and the fabric, metal, or whatever of the embellishment. Whichever type or brand of glue you choose, test it first to be sure your embellishments will stay put! We offer a good selection of glues in the Sassy Feet store. The description for each one tells you what to use it for.

You'll find a detailed chart of all the glues I have tested and recommend (plus when to use them) in my book Sassy Feet! How to Paint, Bead, Bedeck, and Embellish Your Shoes.

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Stitching Things On

In general, it works better to stitch on metal or bead embellishments rather than trying to glue them on. Shoes get a lot of wear, and they bend, which means they give glues a real workout. Also, many of the things I attach to shoes, like the little enamel plaque on the ballet slipper above, aren't flat, so they pose an even greater challenge to glue.

Instead, I stitch on embellishments like this using Dandyline fishing line (20 pound test weight, in white or soft black. Dandyline is much, much stronger than nylon beading thread and, unlike other kinds of fishing line, it can be tied in nice tight knots.  I tie off the ends using two surgeon's knots.

A surgeon's knot is just like tying a simple square knot, except the first time you do left-over-right and pull the left side down through the middle, made one more loop around with it before pulling tight. The second step of making the knot (the right-over-left bit) is the same as usual. The best visual on how to do this is in the back of beading magazines, though you may also find something useful on the web.

Often it's best to tie your knots on the outside of the shoe, just under the edge of the embellishment. That way, the knots barely show and they won't rub against your feet as you walk.

I recommend using a leather or “glover’s” needle to make it easy to penetrate the leather, plus a heavy-duty leather thimble and sometimes a pair of needle-nose pliers for pulling the needle through extra-thick leather..