Sunday, May 24, 2009

Swarovski Stilettos - Part 2


Spray painting the shoes:
If the shoe is not already the colour of the rhinestones you want to use, you may have to spray them with a hobby spray paint as a base colour (I tend to use a Plastic-Kote project paint from the paint isle in B&Q) that will work on the fabric of the shoe.

If they need soleing for grip whilst wear, best to take them to the cobbler first if they are new before stoning them as its hard for them to do it after and might ruin all your hard work.

If you wear insoles* to cushion your feet and the shoes are new, best to put them on now and walk around all evening in them, as there is nothing worse than finding out later that they hurt like hell and all your work is to waste.

*Oooh top tip form my gran, you might want to cutout where your toes go in your insoles, especially in heels, so they don’t cram your toes and will give them a bit of space over the insole lip to wriggle in the end, so you don’t get the dreaded toe cramp at the end of the evening.

I want to use these gold shoes I am doing here for photo work, as well as wear, so I am spraying the base to match, other wise I would mask off the base as well as the heel for normal use.

Masking off:
Before you start you will need to mask off the areas you don’t want painted with tape and give it a few coats so the colour is even.
Spraying in strokes and building up is better than spraying in one spot as the paint can run.

You can use masking tape, but it can tend to let the paint run if your a bit heavy handed with the spray can, the tape gets too damp and curls up at the edges letting in any further coats added and a furry smudged paint edge.

A plastic coated sticky tape (I tend to use duct tape rather than electrical tape as it tends to work better) can mask off the inside of the shoe up to the inside seam to stop paint being on the inside of the shoe and then flaking off on your stockings when wearing them later.
Spraying:
Painting the base can be tricksy to get the shoe to stand upright to be sprayed, if you stuff the shoe after its masked up, with scrunched up Tin Foil, it will mould to shoe/ ground and help the shoe stand while upside down ready to be sprayed.

When all coats completely dry take off the tape.

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London, United Kingdom
Lover of most things vintage and retro

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