Camouflage Sneakers

 Well I did it, I went and got creative. Check out C1's newest pair of shoes:

I saw this post over at LBB for Graffitti shoes and was immediately jealous in love with her creatvity. I mean seriously check these out, complete with a brilliant tutorial.

 Can you believe the awesomeness? I can't creative and adorable.

So I was inspired to go out and make a similar pair for my little one. The thing is C1 is not really a graffitti girl. She only wants to wear things that are purple and  insists on answering to the name Orajel the Jaguar (don't ask because I don't understand myself).

I went to my local stomping grounds, an Early Childhood PTA kids resale, and picked up this pair of shoes for $2.00. I love me some Chuck Taylors, but they were not purple so C1 refused to wear them. She said they looked like boy shoes.

I contemplated whether to save them for C2 or make them into something that she would wear. I went for purple camouflage and gathered up the following supplies:

• Ad Age (You could use pretty much anything to paint on, but I felt like painting on Ad Age instead of reading it this week.)
• Fabric paint
• Shoes (fabric)

So here is the paint I used:

The Ad Age I defaced:

And now for simple, play it by ear instructions.

I took out the laces then coated the shoes in white fabric paint to cover up the tan color.

I should have taped everything off and stuffed the shoe with newspaper, but I was going for quick and easy.

After painting the shoes white you have a lovely blank canvas to work with.

I wanted to use all of the shades of purple C1 picked out during our last trip to the craft store so I decided on doing a camouflage look. I dotted various different shades of purple next to one another to make the camouflage splotches. If I thought that the colors were blending in a little too much I dotted in some more white paint to break things up.

I initially tried to work around the shoe holes, but I gave up. I kept camouflaging until I was happy with the look. It took me about two hours. (Disclaimer: I was watching Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice so a few breaks took place so I could oogle at McSteamy and company.)


Here is the finished product:

Allow to dry for twenty four hours, lace up and off you go.

That was easy, wasn't it?

Next: find out what I did with that pile of t-shirts.