DIY: chevron shoes

Today I want to share with you a little DIY I did with a pair of white canvas shoes and a little paint. The chevron stripe is popping up all over the internet these days - especially on pinterest - (you can follow me here) so I thought I would make some of my own  -

What you need:

• Paint (I was lazy/earth friendly and used acrylic paint that I already had at home- rather than going out and buying everything new. I sealed the acrylic paint at the end with modge podge. You should ideally use a fabric paint)
• Paintbrush
• White canvas shoes
• Scissors
• Sticky Tape
• Cardboard
• Pencil

In order to get the chevron stripes the same size/angle I used a little bit of a cheat method -

First measure the angle and size of the stripe that you would like, based on the shoe. I wanted to fit in at least three different colours on the toe end of the shoe - so i based the size of the stripe on that. Once I had decided the basic size, I drew a very rough mountain/chevron-type shape onto the cardboard of an old cereal box. Next I cut out the cardboard shape and placed it on the shoe to trace around it. I used the tongue of the shoe as a central positioning guide and traced around the shape in pencil from the toe end. Keep the cardboard chevron shape so that you can get the same pattern every time.

Repeat on the other foot.

Once i had the shape penciled in, I used some ordinary sticky tape to mark off the area to be painted. This helps to get nice clean lines when you are painting.

Next is to pain the colour onto your shoe. Decide before you start painting what colours you are going to be using and in what order. I used a Bronze, gold and bright pink.
When the paint on the first layer has dried, you can remove the tape (wow! look at that straight line!) and then put your cardboard-chevron-mountain shape on the shoe a little higher up and repeat the process - drawing first with pencil, then taping and then painting.
Work your way all around the shoe until you reach the back. You can choose to do a chevron stripe all the way along the shoe like I did, or you can stop once you have finished the toe section and paint the rest of the shoe solid. I stopped the chevron stripe at the very back and painted the back a solid pink to match the shoe tongues.