Yes, I have a slight shoe fetish, being female it seems to come with the territory. Frankly, it doesn’t stand out that much as it has to vie for space and time with my slight rose fetish, weird perfume fetish, umbrella fetish, and so on and so forth. But, for several years now I have had a secret, unrealised wish. And it was this: to one day, paint my very own pair of shoes. I love clothes/shoe modding! (modifying) Why spend weeks making the item from scratch when I can recycle something perfectly hideous from the local op shop in a fraction of the time and make something completely unique? I have been very inspired by Craftster in this respect. Craftster is this incredible site full of mad people like me who just have to make things. I found these amazing shoes all prettied up, and also these incredible painted shoes. Which put me in mind of another favourite thing of mine – iridescent medium. This is awesome stuff. It looks rather dull, white paint in a pot. But it makes every acrylic colour you add it to turn into sparkly shimmery jewel tones.

So, I took the plunge recently and decided to murder a cheap pair of white fabric shoes bought specially for the purpose. Instead of buying a set of fabric paints I bought a fabric painting medium which when mixed into acrylic paint turns it into fabric paint. All you need to do to make it set permanently (water fast), is to heat set it once you’re done. And here they are, my first pair of painted shoes!

I adore them! They are shimmery in real life, and the cats are metallic gold and bronze – the photo doesn’t really capture it. I want many, many more. And I love that the shoes themselves are inexpensive, canvas shoes can be bought for $5 at some stores. I’ve been wearing a $12 pair of canvas shoes all year and apart from all the white bits going a bit grey (which is why I’ve painted all the white on these) they are still in great nick. I can see my shoe collection expanding significantly over the next year. 🙂 I’ve also had a quite a bit of interest from potential customers! But the next pair are mine – these are a gift for someone who loves cats. The big test will be when she wears them out in the rain and we find out how well my heat setting worked!