Well, here goes another explanation of a crazy decision!
ABOVE: (these are my shoes)
BELOW: (these are the shoes from the movie)
After seeing those two photos of Belle’s shoes, I was determined to find replicas, or more like, I needed to find shoes that had the same shapes so then I could paint them and add the feathers.
After many (I repeat, MANY) hours of research, I could not find any shoes that would work….well, I actually did, they just cost $130+ and I was unwilling to spend that much on shoes that I was planning to paint and glue add feathers to, plus, only wear a few times!
In those hours of research, I came upon these shoes (below) and decided to turn them into Belle’s shoes! This decision was based on some encouraging posts I found online. These posts showed successful conversion of shoes.
Most of the material I used are pictured here….though, I did switched the white feathers to pre-painted gold feathers.
As you can see, they have the right heel style and toe point.
~ The Process ~
I won’t be writing much for the rest of this post, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves!
Drafting the heel pattern.
The draft of the whole shoe.This is the second draft.
Don’t mind the color of the leather, it’ll be covered up! For this project, I purchased a bag of scrap leather.I started out the project using this glue…I then switched to the E600 glue; it’s way better!The first leather piece is attached!
These are the straps.
Here’s where the fabric glueing starts!The goal is to get the fabric as smooth as possible!Pins are my best friends!
See what I mean? Pins worked wonders for this project!
Don’t worry about the glue soaking through the fabric, it’s going to be painted!
Some twill tape covers up the raw edges!Yay, painting time! Expect to apply several coats of it!
Painting is done! Onto the feathers!
Last step: painting the edges of the soles, and reattaching them! I used liquid cement for reattaching!
Lovely! Why did you add that leather layer, if you put fabric and then paint on top of it? The fabric doesn’t attach well to the original shoe?
I wanted that flap to be nice and thick, the fabric would have been to wrinkly! 🙂