Sketchers Transformed: painted shoes

This is totally off topic unless you consider that painting shoes is somehow akin to making art, but I just had to brag about my outrageous new shoes. I have a pair of Sketchers that fit well but which I considered ugly and useful only for wear in the studio.

So I painted them.

Here are the steps I took:

1. clean with acetone.
2. paint with gesso
3. paint with cadmium red acrylic
4. draw circles on the shoes with a black sharpie Paint Pen
5. fill in the circles with Titanium white acrylic paint
6. touch up where needed
7. cut off old strap, leaving 1.5 inches attached at the toe.
8. sew 2 black/white ribbons (one striped, one dotted) together back to back and then sew one end onto the remaining strap, by hand.
9. cut the ribbon strap to appropriate length and add Velcro to the underside at the end.
10. thread the ribbon through the d-rings and fasten.

I've never done anything like this so I did searches online and on Pinterest to see how other shoe painters work and to get ideas for styles. There's so much information out there and people are incredibly generous about sharing ideas.

My DH dared me to wear them to church. Hummmmm. Maybe I'm not THAT brave, but they'll do for the 4th of July party tomorrow.