DIYs/How To Do Things,  Fashion,  Lifestyle,  Wedding,  Wedding DIYs

DIYing My Wedding Shoes

We are now under the 3 month mark for our wedding and I am decidedly beginning to panic..but within reason. As with many other aspects of the wedding, I had no idea what I wanted when it came to my wedding shoes. Heels or flats? Solid or a print? Sparkly or…just kidding, they were always going to be sparkly. I thought that maybe I wanted to have two pairs of shoes – one heels, and one flats, so I could wear the heels to the ceremony and the flats for the rest of the night. But wedding shoes can be EXPENSIVE, and it was sure to be quite a task to find two pairs of shoes that looked nice together and didn’t cost an arm and a leg.

I was inspired by this pair of beautiful Badgley Mischka heels:

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STUNNING, right? I love how the glitter looks kinda chunky and maybe even of different sizes? And I love the d’Orsay style where it’s cut out on the inside like that. After searching for what felt like ages, this is the first shoe I saw that made me think – THAT is what I want to wear for my wedding. But they’re sold for the extremely unfortunate price of $200!! I seriously considered just going for it and buying them, but especially once I remembered that I want to have some matching flats…it just became a ridiculous concept to spend that kind of money on these shoes. So I decided to DIY them!

I knew I wanted that d’Orsay style, pointed toe shoe. I started looking around, and I didn’t have to look very long before finding several suitable options:

 

Left from Famous Footwear, right from Target. I didn’t choose these though because the material didn’t seem like it would take to the glitter well – I wanted something more smooth and less suede-like. I thought. I had no idea what I wanted going into this, I was just kind of winging it and that seemed to make the most sense at the time lol

I ultimately decided on these short heels from Amazon, and this pair of flats from Target.

I ended up going with a shorter heel so I didn’t have to worry about stumbling down the aisle as opposed to walking lol. My dress is also already the perfect length and didn’t want them to have to re-hem it in alterations. They look pretty short in person and I kind of wish I had gotten a bit taller of a heel, but I don’t regret my purchase. I was confident they’d look good once they were all glittery anyway lol

I did a little research online and found a few people who had done this before, so I knew I wasn’t crazy for attempting it haha. I picked up the necessary supplies after getting my shoes of choice and we were in business!

supplies.png

  • Foam craft brushes
  • Mod Podge – I used glossy but I really don’t think it matters
  • Krylon sealing spray
  • Several sizes of silver glitter, all from Michael’s
  • also, not pictured…a large bowl, a spoon, and a LOT of paper towels. and a surface on which to do this that you don’t mind getting coated in glitter.

For the glitter, we picked up a few different types.

glitters

The one on the left had two sizes, a very fine glitter and then one that was larger and more like sequins. The other container had a medium size. My inspo shoes seemed to have larger, more chunky glitter, so I wanted to have options.

Here’s the before pic of my shoes:

shoes

One good thing about glittering my shoes is that it doesn’t matter what color the original shoe is because it’s gong to be covered in glitter anyway, so I could use any color to start out with.

I decided to do the flats first, for whatever reason. At the beginning I wasn’t really sure what method I wanted to go with. I did this over the sink so I could just rinse away all the glitter when I was finished, but as for the actual transferring of glitter to shoe…it took a bit of trial and error. I started out with a plastic cup that I put the glitter in.

cup

I planned on painting on a bit of mod podge and then pouring the glitter over top. That makes sense, right? So I grabbed a bit of mod podge:

bit

I had read online from other people who had done this that it worked best to do it in sections. I painted the front quarter-ish of my shoe and poured some glitter from the cup on. I did this over a paper plate so it didn’t get TOO messy…

first thing

Looks pretty good! I didn’t escape without getting some glitter in the shoe though:

in shoe

Spoiler: there’s a lot more where that came from. Anyway, I carried on to the other half of the shoe with the same method, putting mod podge on in what I felt like was a generous layer:

half

and then pouring on some glitter:

glitter bowl

It was looking great!! However, I quickly figured out that this method was not ideal. Glitter was still getting everywhere, and transferring glitter from plate to cup after each pour was just – it was not good. So I got out a big bowl and a spoon and decided to try a new method.

bowl

Instead of pouring from the cup, I held everything over the bowl full of glitter and used the spoon to pick up little scoops and pour it over the shoe. After a few scoops I’d give the shoe a good shake to get all the excess back into the bowl. It worked MUCH better and was a lot quicker too!

done

Once I was done with the first coat I went over any spots that needed a little more glitter:

spot

and it was done! It turned out pretty good, I thought:

done shoe

And a before/after shot:

ba

Once I was finished I started on my second shoe. I used the same method of going in sections, pouring glitter as I went.

It didn’t take long until I was done with the other shoe too. You can see how glittery my hands are at this point…this is why I did it over the sink lol

done!

They looked so good!!!

both

I set them aside to dry. Now it was time to work on the heels.

I was feeling a little bold at this point – I guess I was confident from having just successfully glittered my first pair of shoes – so I decided to mix up the glitter types a bit. First I wanted to use just the fine glitter to see how I liked that look.

Same process, glue then glitter:

It looked pretty good, but I thought it needed a bit more…something. I decided it was time to try out the big glitters.

Since this was all still trial and error-based (much like the rest of my life), I decided to try it out just on the heel of one shoe, so if I hated it at least I didn’t have an entire shoe of it.

Here’s a closer look:

heel test 2

I liked the idea of it. Using only the big pieces along with the super fine glitter made it look…idk, a little dance costumey? So I decided to mix in some of the medium sized glitter as well. You know, yolo and all that.

half done

side

And I LOVE how that looks! The mixing of the different sizes looks so good and really achieves the affect that I was looking for on the inspo shoes. I love it!!!

ba2

The before and after pic is so stunning. I absolutely love how these turned out!

I finished off the other shoe quickly and they looked so beautiful when I was done:

both shoes

And here’s how both pairs looked together:

both pairs.png

I LOVED both but I honestly think that after seeing the heels with the big glitter, it almost seems like the flats are missing something now haha. I planned on going in with a second coat anyway for any touch ups, so I might just have to go back in on the flats with the big glitter next time as well! After that I’ll just spray them with my clear sealant to lock in the glitter (as much as is possible, anyway) and they’ll be done!

ba final.png

I am absolutely in LOVE with how my shoes turned out!! I think they’re going to make great photos and be so stunning on our wedding day, and I can’t wait to wear them 🙂 As we get closer to wedding time I’m sure I’ll be busier than ever but I’ll try to make time to write more wedding prep posts if I can. It’s a good stress relief when everything else is so hectic haha

I hope you enjoyed this post and thank you for reading as always! Only 88 days left til the big day <3

3 Comments

  • lkc4052

    They turned out great! I never saw the finished product. They look as good as or better than the expensive ones. You may want to point out that the glitter was flown in from Virginia and your dear mother got stopped and had the bag hand searched because of it. The TSA agent asked what it was for and when I told her she said, “Great idea! I bet they’ll be beautiful!” lol I wonder what it looked like in the x-ray machine.

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