Craft Bolt: Flag Shoes

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Flag Shoes

To celebrate the 4th of July (I do live in the USA), I decided to do something I had been wanting to do for a while- paint my converse.

This project was inspired by two things- 4th of July (today), and a pair of converse that one of my friends painted like Lord of The Rings in honor of the Hobbit coming out. That was back in December, I know, but it's part of why I painted these. In any case, here are the shoes:

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of the original shoes, but you can imagine them: the navy-colored converse sold various stores. These I think I got from Target for a few dollars when they were on sale sometime last year. I don't wear them much, due to them not being terribly waterproof, but I might now, since they look cool. Any I might waterproof them with camping tent spray.

I started by painting my pair of converse red and blue. Not much to this step, except that you want to make sure that you tape the rubber parts of your shoe off. As you can see here, My tape job isn't super pretty, but it's functional. Also, having done this now, I would suggest taking the laces out before you paint.

Another suggestion, just for those wondering, is to decide which side of each shoe you want blue/red. I wanted the left side of both of mine to be blue, because then it looks more like a flag, but just think about that first.

As you can see, I took the laces out of this shoe.

I used Acrylic paint for all of this. I don't know if that makes a huge difference, but it's really easy to clean up (just use water), and it lasts pretty well against water. If you want to know why, go look it up. It's kind of interesting. You should be able to find this stuff at pretty much any craft store.

As you can see, the stars aren't perfect. I don't think I have the same number of stars on each shoe, either. The trick, I think, is to make sure the first two rows (closest to the stripes) are the same.