Shoe Makeover: Ombre Painted Sneakers in Any Color!

Ombre is a trend that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. And I’m totally cool with that because I am a big, big fan of the technique. A color fading to white, what’s cooler than that?

I also love that it looks great in so many colors… From red to purple to aqua you can ombre up absolutely any color for total fantastic-ness. And in this particular tutorial, you’ll learn how to ombre up a pair of sneakers in just about ANY color you please. That’s because for this project we’re using acrylic paint rather than fabric paint which has a limited range of colors. If you’ve never visited the craft acrylic paint section, prepare to have your mind blown because they truly have just about every color you could ever imagine!

For this project you will need:

• white sneakers
• paintbrush
• acrylic paint in a color + white
• textile medium

There are several different brands of the textile medium so grab whichever you please. This stuff “makes regular acrylics permanent for painting on fabric”. Mix your base color of paint up with the ratio advised on the bottle.

And get after it! Start by painting the heel of the shoe in your base color.

And bring it around to the side, about a quarter of the length of the shoe.

Bust out your white paint next and add a dollop to your acrylic paint/textile medium mixture leaving about half of the paint as the original color. You can just mix this up with your brush.

Bring the second color down about another quarter of the length of the shoe.

Continue the previous two steps, adding white to about half of the mixture of paint (the lighter part that is) and then going down another 1/4 of the length leaving the toe of the shoe white.

Go back in with your paints and try to feather the paint from one color to the next. As you can see in the pic I didn’t do an ab fab job everywhere but no worries because you can’t tell while I am wearing them.

These babies are ready to wear!

And as I said before, you can make these in just about ANY color! So head on down to your local craft store and check out that acrylic paint section and get to painting!

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.