Making Galaxy Shoes (tutorial)

Hello people!

I purchased a pair of plain white shoes at the beginning of the summer. I didn't really have any plans for them. I was thinking of leaving them white and writing quotes all over them. I obviously changed my mind. After seeing some super cute wedges that had a galaxy scape that would make NASA proud, I knew what I wanted to do.  

Thus is my tutorial on how to make galaxy shoes! 

What you'll need:
-Shoes that you are willing to paint on (I recommend that they be black)
- Acrylic paint, the more the merrier.
-Brushes, something that you can dab with, and a small one for making stars
- Pictures of space (optional)
-Some spray varnish
-A cupcake for when you are done (optional but strongly recommended)

                                              Here are the white shoes, fresh from the box.

 

I started painting the edges of the shoe black with a smaller brush, in retrospect, starting with a black shoe is easier because you can skip this step. 

I changed to a bigger bush to fill in the rest of the shoe. I kept the trim white but you can do what you like with it.

 After I finished painting the shoes black I searched Googled galaxy and space photos.  I eventually went to NASA's website because I didn't like the results I was getting on Google. (That doesn't happen often does it?)

I found a picture that had a lot of blue and brown-red colors.  So that's what I used for the first shoe.

Here's the "finished" result for the right shoe.  I added stars in after it dried.

Here's palette with the colors I used.  I used a stubby, short bush and used a tapping motion to pain it. I found I could spread the color without mixing or smugging the colours together.

This is my work space before I started the left shoe.  Yeah. It's kinda messy and on the left of the picture you can see all the tubes of paint I used in this project.

If you turn your head sideways you'll see my left shoe.  I painted two nebula's on this one.

Here is a side view to show that I paint the design on to the side of the shoe.

Here are both shoes all painted.  

I let them dry for 24 hours before starting the next step.  

The next step is to splatter white "stars" on the shoe.  Make you sure you test your splatter before you do it on your shoes.  I know I have the tendency to make really big messy splatters and get most of it on myself.  This is not at all what I wanted for these shoes so I tested the splatter technique with a couple of brushes before I found one that makes super small white dots. Perfect!

  

I used a small brush to paint big stars.  I also dabbed in some stars in silver and some yellow stars that supposedly glow in the dark, but they don't glow, the dots are too small.   

Above are the shoes after splattering, and painting in the stars.  When I was looking at the NASA pictures I noticed that some of the stars are clouded over by gas and particles that may eventually create planets. I went over the nebulae with a thin layer of transparent colours. 

I waited about a day or two and sprayed them with varnish to seal the finish. Below are the final result,   

Side Views

The Back

I hope you enjoyed that. If you have any questions feel free to put them in the comment section.