Crystal Kicks

Once upon a time, before there was Pinterest, there was plain, old Google Images. While not as beautiful as Pinterest, Google Images still hands over TONS of ideas with a few quick keystrokes.  And it was to Google Images that I turned after I got engaged last year when I wanted to find some truly amazing shoes. Enter Christian Louboutin's "Aurora Boreale" - a $3,600.00 pair of shoes that is completely encrusted in Swarovski crystals. 

Obviously, I almost died. First, because the shoes are so amazing, and second, because of the cost. So I set out to see if I could find them any cheaper. Along the way, I stumbled upon a super fun blog called Redo My Shoe. The author makes a living by strassing (aka: crystallizing) people's Louboutin's that they send to him. Awesome, right? I thought so. And then I thought:

"I'm awesome too...and I bet I could strass my own shoes!"

After some Google/YouTube research, I discovered that lots of other people have tried this, and (mostly) succeeded. So after I psyched myself up, I decided to give it a go. While nowhere close to being done yet, I thought I'd blog my progress so far. Let me know what you think :)

First, I purchased plain black patent leather pumps (at 40% off - yeah!) from The Bay, then wore them to work (inside only) for about 2 weeks to break them in. 

Next I painted them silver (to give the crystals a similar colour base). This is after the first coat of paint only. (Ugly, right? Yeah, it was bad.) It eventually took 5 coats of paint to cover the black. Totally worth it. 

After about 3 coats of paint (below), I decided that I wanted to paint the soles red to look like actual Louboutin's. After some drama at the paint store (RED PAINT on my FAVORITE LULULEMON HOODIE! Rawr!!) I started the slow, painful process of taping off the silver in order to paint the soles. (For those of you who are panicked about my hoodie...Tide to Go saved the day. Disaster averted!)

Check it out! Looking good, right? After 3 coats of red, I peeled off the tape and added another 2 coats of silver to the shoes. They are now ready to strass! 

I decided to start on the heel (at the bottom) and work my way up. That way, if it turned out I was terrible at applying a zillion crystals, at least it would be on the heel only. Check out my progress to date (April 5, 2012): 

So far that is about 300 crystals, and about 90 minutes of crystal-work. (The painting/prep work took very little time, but was spread out over a number of days so it could dry properly.) As you've probably noticed, all the crystals are the same size (and TINY). This was by design. Once I move onto the sides of the shoes, I'll start intermixing 3 different sizes of crystals. I'm still nervous, but I have a plan :) For those of you who are wondering, I expect about 15-20 hours of strassing altogether, and somewhere in the region of 3000-4000 crystals (total). 

As you can probably tell, I'm REALLY excited about this project. (The photos don't do the crystals justice - they sparkle like you would not believe!) I can't wait to keep working on them and then to finally wear them. Watch for a flash of sparkle at the altar!

What do you think? :) Chat soon,

Meg