DIY Shoe Makeover: Saint Patrick’s Day Rainbow Glitter Flats

All of the women in my line are crafty ladies. We love fabric and glitter and my 74-year-old grandmother has a new obsession with resin (and a blow torch, heaven help us all). The entire time I was growing up we’d have crafty times… For example, my mom would buy a whole mess of fabric and flip-flops and we’d tie those babies up like you wouldn’t believe. We’d make so many of whatever the particular project was that we’d wind up having to give most of our efforts away.

When I first started my crafty blog I didn’t tell anyone in my family. A lot of that was because I didn’t want them to know if I failed and the other part was because I was worried that they would think the whole idea was silly. The first person I told was Momma. She informed me that she didn’t know what a ‘blog’ was but that we should go to Hobby Lobby and buy stuff to make bookmarks right NOW. Nowadays, she calls up at totally random times with ideas for craft projects for me and it is so awesome that she’s so into the whole thing.

Her favorite thing I do are shoe restyles, so she sent me a pair of black flats to “go crazy on” and St. Patrick’s Day just happens to be coming up. And while it may not be terribly nice, my thoughts went like this: my Momma is a shortie –> leprechauns are short –> and they have a pot of gold –> at the end of a rainbow –> MOMMA’S LITTLE RAINBOW FEET LEPRECHAUN SHOES. What could make this idea even more awesome? You guessed it, glitter.

For this project you will need:

• Flats
• Acrylic paints in red, orange, yellow, green, and blue and a brush
• Glitter in red, orange, yellow, green, and blue
• Mod Podge and a brush
• Clear polyurethane spray

 Here are the shoes my Mom sent me, they’re basic fabric flats.

The bows were cute but were going to get in the way. To remove I used a very sharp razor blade and just sliced that sucker clean off.

Take your shoes and paint out the pattern you are going to glitter. The reason we are doing this is that if we mess up our pattern, it will be much easier to fix with paint than glued-down glitter. Also, the glitter isn’t going to cover 100% but the paint underneath will hide that fact. The peach color was standing in for my orange. I wound up redoing that to better suit the glitter I used.

I wanted to colors to seem to naturally go into the next one so I went red, orange, yellow, green, and blue but feel free to do any combination you wish in any order.

 When your shoes are completely dry, take and brush a healthy amount of Mod Podge onto a section. Apply with a heavy hand.

Liberally sprinkle with glitter. Tap to remove the excess and fill in any spots that the glue didn’t stick to.  Put the shoe off to the side, taking care that any accidental touches can remove your glitter while it is drying.

If you work alternating shoes, they will dry well enough in between that you can work fairly quickly.

Continue glittering in whatever order you are comfortable in. I worked the toe (red), the insole (yellow), and then the heel (blue). Working this way the sections dried well enough that when I went in with the orange and green there was no worry of smudging the glitter work I  had already done and I still had good support to hold onto while working.

Rub off any excess glitter that is glued to your rubber soles and set your shoes off to dry completely. Finish with a clear polyurethane spray to help keep the glitter on the shoes where it belongs.

You may notice in my pics that there is a bit more glitter around than there should be. That is because I ran out of spray and went ahead and took these pics. In the process, I left a trail of glitter all through my house. It would be best if you made sure you had the spray before tackling this project to prevent a big mess. Have fun glittering up the joint!

Allison

A crafter since her earliest years, Allison spends a little time every day making something. She crafts, sews, paints, glues things onto other things, and is a firm believer that a life spent creating is a life worth living. Visit Allison’s blog, Dream {a Little} BIGGER.