Acrylic Paint And Shoes

This might sound weird, but if you have any shoes in your closet that you never ever wear, giving them a fresh coat of paint could redecide whether they’re wearable or not. You could do whatever pattern you want, whatever color you want, and as long as the paint doesn’t wash off with water, it’s an excellent way to turn what was boring into something new. What’s even cooler about it is that it’ll look like whatever you want it to be. A fresh coat of paint only has to dry and be applied about two or three times, and you’ll have a brand new pair of shoes. 

Don’t forget to block out a design using blue tape. If you don’t, your paint could get in places you don’t want it to get. On my flats on the bottom, I blocked out the giant black stripe, and then added tape where I needed it to make sure paint wouldn’t get where I didn’t want it. 

Sometimes, like with the boots on the right, you can freehand part of it if you’d like to give it a more freeform. If you’re wondering what those things sticking out of the white square on each boot is, they’re safety pins. 

Sticking safety pins wherever you want them is another super simple way to upgrade a bit of fashion.

But, back to shoes.

The last time I started to try to learn how to add a bit of paint to shoes, I didn’t use the tape trick. It was a disaster because the coloring got in all the wrong places. It was a bust. When tackling these two projects, the addition of that one, extra step helped create things I could be proud of.

Sometimes, it’s those extra steps we don’t take when we’re lazy can end up ruining whatever we’re trying to do.

Other than that, having blank canvases that I could turn into anything, after they sat in my closet for years collecting dust, ended up turning into parts of my closet I would wear over and over and over again. 

So, instead of them ending up in the landfill, they landed up on my feet.

I not only encourage the use of the tape trick when upcycling, but I also encourage upcycling whatever you already own that you don’t wear. That can end up saving the earth more than we know, and can keep our stuff from ending up rotting the land. That’s just a little tidbit, but it’s also much more fun to turn something we never use into something we do. We can look at them and say, “I made this! This came out of me!”

As an artist, that’s one of the best feelings.

And, if you’d like extra protection over your freshly painted shoes, please use a sealant to make sure the paint never budges.