A little shoe modding

I've had my American Duchess Georgiana shoes in the closet for a good long while, so this weekend when I was looking for a project to do outside I decided to finally paint them. I'd bought some Lumiere metallic green paint (#542 citrine) at Costume College last year with the idea that the metallic was subtle enough that it might look like a shot silk and I think it sort of does - a green/yellow maybe.  These metallic paints are more like pearlescent colors - there is no glitter in them, just a subtle metallic glow.. I did three thin layers everywhere but the heel and tongue which I've left white; I may paint them a contrasting color and wanted to leave them blank while I looked around at some images and decided on design.  I'm very happy with the pain, it was easy to work with and dried very quickly in the sunshine. I tried to apply it evenly and I think I did a decent job.  The best part about shoes is everyone sees them from about 5 feet away! ;) I'm not quite done yet, I plan on gluing/sewing on some silk ribbon around the edges of the tongue and latches to mimic period shoes but pretty happy with how they turned out. The color kind of reminds me of these shoes from the met.

Comments

  1. The green is definitely a pretty wonderful colour. Can't wait to see how you finish them, you have some great ideas.

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    1. Thanks! I'm pretty happy with the color. I've got to get out a bunch of different ribbon colors and see what looks the best.

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  2. They look great! Did you find it difficult to keep the heel from getting painted? I took my AD shoes to the local shoe dye guy and asked if he could do something similar to your project. He told me that it wasn't possible to dye the fabric without it bleeding onto the heel. : (

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    1. There are a few tiny spots from mistakes I made but the color didn't bleed at all, it's more like a paint than a dye. I used a very fine brush for the edges and outlined them first then blended the edges of that into the broader strokes on the bulk of the shoe.

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  3. Very very nice and they do look like the antique shoes you linked to. Like the idea of the edge binding. You could I suppose even mimic the gold design with some of the Lumiere pale gold. But they look lovely as they are anyway. I can see them in my mind's eye all finished!
    I like Lumiere paints. They come in handy for all sorts of things. My favourite is the Halo pink shot with gold.

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    1. I was just eyeing that paint and thinking it would look mighty nice on these shoes too. ;)

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    2. And your comment is making me think that the brocade AD shoe would look mighty pretty painted with these...

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  4. Those are looking great! I think you are the first to paint the silk shoes completely with pain rather than dye. It looks like they came out perfectly fine. :-) I look forward to seeing the final result. :-)

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    1. Thanks! I'm notoriously bad with dye and worried I'd get streaks and someone suggested I use this paint and just give it a bunch of thin coats and a scotch guard top coat. It was very easy to handle and I think came out very evenly when painted on with a soft brush.

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  5. What a great idea using slightly metallic paint to achieve a satin effect!

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