Tag Archives: painted shoes

Jul1

Aspic is not a thing to do in public

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I have been very social this weekend, and now I am tired.

But I thought I’d comment on a couple of nice things that have happened lately. My friend/coworker and I went out to dinner Friday after work at one of our local favorite restaurants. One of the owners, whom I’d told about this blog, came over to say how much she’s enjoying it and how funny it is, and that she’d gotten some of her employees reading it too. It totally made my day. And it made me think about the Julie/Julia Project, one of the inspirations for this blog. I would never have known about it if my friend/boss from another job, Susan, hadn’t told me about it as Julie Powell’s year was unfolding. We dug into it every day and chatted about Julie’s latest disaster or triumph or the general insanity of making aspic five days in a row for dinner, especially when you hate aspic. So it’s a tribute to Susan, who passed away a couple of weeks ago, that I’m doing a similar unhinged project. And it’s exciting to think there’s a little of that chatting over what’s going on in this space, just as Julie got us talking about cooking and kitchen disasters and whatever.

(Miss you, Susan. Feeling very nostalgic over those chats and others in your cube, which had the great view of Idaho and mountains behind our campus. And one time, a moose, which I think was the first I’d ever seen.)

Another nice thing: I was wearing my mod-podged shoes last night at the outdoor theater in a nearby county, and was drive-by fangirled. I actually was digging in my purse and missed what the ladies said, but my companion signal-boosted that for me. They are showing some charming wear, but I still get compliments on them. (They could use a little more glue in spots, though.)

Also: My brother, future sis-in-law and her niece met me and my regular theater companion for brunch this morning, and then we went to the thrift shop in town, and after that to the indoor flea market. Future sis-in-law admired and decided to buy a craft item I had for sale (most of my booth is household stuff I’m letting go of, but I put up a few items from the art show I participated in a few weeks ago) before she realized it was something I made. Cool! I also found out I’d had a good month again this time out (after a couple of weeks where I had nothing but crafts up and made next to nothing), so after my initial up-front rent payment, I’ve managed to pay next month’s rent out of proceeds and make a little profit besides. And hey, I got my check from the art show, and it’s the best year I’ve had there, too.

So I’m feeling the love, and am very grateful and happy about that.

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Apr8

Number Nine…Number Nine…Project #9

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Number Nine…Number Nine…Project #9

Perfectly awesome, y/y?

As promised, no felt on this week’s project. This one was decided on impulse, when I started thinking about shoes for travel. I’ve seen a couple of interesting things on Pinterest lately: painted shoes and collaged shoes. I thought of the perfect pair for this project: I have this wonderful pair of clogs — cushy, comfortable and cool. The problem is I’ve pretty much worn them to death. They’re black fake leather with red fake reptile wingtips, and even once they were completely shabby I invariably got comments about how awesome they are. But the black has pretty much worn away, though if I remember right, the wingtips are still in good shape. So I had this bright idea to paint them. I was thinking sky blue with painted clouds on the black parts, and maybe liquid gold leaf on the wingtips.

So of course I couldn’t find them. I do believe they’re somewhere — they’re too beloved to toss out without them looking WAY worse. But I found another pair of shoes, a cushy pair of clogs with a neoprene collar type thing that makes a strap across the heel. Comfortable, but pretty clodhopper-looking, so they look many years younger than their actual age. I didn’t think to photograph them before I started to pain them, so you’ll have to imagine a very dark brown, pebbly leather.

I took them and a bottle of neon blue acrylic paint to my art group, where I promptly appalled one of the women there. “You’re not going to paint them!” she said a time or two. “But they’re perfectly good shoes!” (We wear the same size, too, which probably made watching this desecration a little more painful.

But now they are perfectly awesome shoes.

Perfectly awesome, y/y?

Once I find the other pair of shoes, I have learned a few things of use. I will definitely need primer of some sort to get a pure color. I happen to like the teal that came from the combo of neon blue and dark brown, so I’m completely happy. But I dropped the whole sky idea and decided to decoupage something onto the shoes instead. Thought about something along the lines of a vintage picture from an old dictionary or encyclopedia, but nothing specific called my name and it seemed they’d be likely to be too small. So I leated through an art book I have that’s a small trim size but fairly fat, with a painting on every page. I found a bunch of them at a bookstore for $1 each because their spines were broken, so I bought several to hack up for art projects.

Found this one by Carel Fabritus:

The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritus

Because, you know: birds.

The other thing I learned, paper doesn’t really like to curve around shoes, and once curved, may not want to stay that way. As my foot beds the shoe, little cracks are appearing, but I actually like them. I will put a few more layers of varnish over them to preserve them, wrinkles and cracks and all.

Transformed from hardly-ever-wear to so-damn-cool-I-want-to-wear-them-all-the-time.