Thursday, March 03, 2011

Advice needed!

I'm in the middle of giving my room a badly-needed spring cleaning, and stumbled across these shoes in my closet:

I bought them at a thrift store back in October for a costume party--it had a Zoolander theme, and we were supposed to come up with the craziest supermodel outfits we could! The fuchsia color worked perfectly with my (mostly refashioned) costume. And they actually fit pretty well since they lace up the top, which makes the strappy part as wide as you want it to be. (This is exciting for me, since I have really wide feet, and shoes that fit are hard to find. Especially for less than $80, let alone less than $10!)

But red/fuchsia/whatever it is is a color that I basically never wear in my non-pretend-supermodel life. And then there's this issue:

As you can see, the wood-looking heels are basically in perfect condition. The fake leather, not so much.

I'd really like to salvage these sandals if I can, especially since they fit! But refashioning shoes is something I haven't really done, unless you count the cheap Keds that I spray-painted silver back when I was in high school. So I'm curious to see what the rest of you wonderfully creative people think. Should I cover these in fabric of some kind? Peel off the fake leathery bit and paint over these? Or what? (I'd also be quite happy to get color suggestions, since all of my shoes are either black, brown or silver. Just not pink!)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I bed you could cover it with bias-cut fabric or ribbon. I saw a pair of heels covered in Threads magazine,but here's a similar post.

http://whipstitchsewing.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/tutorial-fabric-covered-shoes/

Jenni said...

There is another tutorial on Burda that is pretty impressive too! Just search "fabric covered shoes."
I find red shoes to be very versatile though. "Pop of color" and all that! I've painted shoes before...
http://paganodesignworks.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-paint-shoes.html
But not sure how well the repair would cover.
I think I would add ribbon or trim instead. Rosettes? pleated ruffle? Braid trim?

poet said...

The only shoe refashion I ever did was this: http://baytreepoet.blogspot.com/2010/05/poet-saves-broken-shoes.html
It works with cork wedges, it could also work with wooden heels. But fabric covered shoes also sound like a great idea!