Bridal Custom Shoes

Tacky discount tackled!
Okay, my sister is a very plain girl it seems when it came to picking things out for her wedding. She wanted ballerina shoes for the bridesmaids since frankly the guys tend to be shorter than my sisters (cept for short lil ol me). The downside is to get them dyed to match her colors would be 50 bucks. My sisters don't have much money, so I wanted to make sure I covered all opportunities.

So I walked, and walked, and walked around every store that carried any sort of shoe and took pictures of all the flat ballerina shoes I could find sending to her getting the okay or thumbs down.

Coming to k-mart, I saw these ugly buggers (I'm not a flashy person either but gold shoes are just not my style) they were 4.99 on sale. They had all the girl sizes since we needed eight(me) three tens and an eleven. I can't help it they got big feet lol So I got a second opinion from my mother, called my sister and bought all five pairs.

Going to Jo-Ann fabrics, I took pictures of fabric sending them to her. She liked a pair that she seen online that were covered in lace, so after playing phone and photo tag she picked the gold overlay you see on them now instead of the laces that I showed her in her colors. The stuff was easy to work with since it was a bit stretchy it took well to the mistake of me cutting it too much.

So here is what I did:

I took the fabric medium and mixed it in the desired color of Acrylic paint. This helps the paint be a lil flexible since the shoes are pretty stiff to begin with. My point was so they dont crack. Mixed the the two together and gave it three lovely coats of paint.

I let each layer dry for about an hr. The last layer I left over night since I didn't have modpodge on hand.

I took the fabric and laid it over the shoe cutting the general size I needed in a giant oval shape. I did make sure I had some overlap in the back that was later trimmed and sealed down. BUT I started with the front of the shoe since I wanted to make sure there was no wrinkles and such. Coating the top of the fabric on top of the shoe I made my way slowly around the shoe trimming as I went with a pair of those small nail scissors you get in those nail packs. Those were the smallest ones I could find if I found that I cut it too short at the bottom where it meets the rubber, I just stretched it a bit and tada an easy fix. I did not tuck the fabric inside the shoe since it wasn't necessary and instead lined it up at the top and trimmed the extra. The modpodge made it pretty cloudy but fear not it dries clear and shiny. If you don't want the shoes to be so shiny and in my case since the gold shined I didn't have an issue with the brown part to shine, They actually make matte finish modpodge.

LET THEM DRY OVERNIGHT

Trim the excess in the morning and put another layer on top.

I haven't went strolling in them yet but when I was flexing them the acrylic by itself did slightly crack. I hope with the modpodge on it, it will be fine. If you do these on shoes that don't flex like sandals or heels with straps you probably wont have to worry as much. With the overlay being like it is, I don't have to worry about any cracking especially since the original color of the shoe is gold. There are other paints that you can use that are more flexible like fabric paints, but honestly they did not have any colors close to the colors she picked for our dresses, that is why I went the acrylic with the fabric medium as my paint.

So I hope you like the shoes, sorry it's not a how to, I was winging it as I went. Overall they are pretty easy and you can do this with any old shoe. Instead of painting, you can just use the fabric with the modpodge overtop to seal it in JUST TAKE YOUR TIME!

Break down of Price
$5 for shoes x 5 = $25
$3 for Paint (Already had fabric medium $4)
$6 for fabric
(Already had modpodge $4-$7)
My total = $34/5 Bridesmaid = @7 bucks per bridesmaid :p

:)

Thanks for looking!!