Sassy Feet! blog

You Painted Your What??

A couple of months back, we found an old but stylish leather couch sitting outside our neighbors' house with some other odd stuff. Turns out she was having an impromptu garage sale. We loved the couch, but it was a very worn and faded aqua. It cried out for... LEATHER PAINT!

Now that was an idea that got my creative energies excited! We bought the thing for $50, carried it across the street to our house, and inveigled Destiny into coming to a couch-painting party. After a fair amount of planning and three and a half hours of hands-on work, we had an amazing piece of new furniture on our hands!

The Lumiere paints (and amounts) we used were:

• Super Copper - 3-4 pints
• Metallic Rust - 8 oz.
• Crimson - 4 oz. - mixed with a small amount of Neopaque Black
• Halo Pink Gold - 4 oz.

Here's the story, in photos and captions. 

Before. We cleaned and prepped the surface by rubbing with rags damped with rubbing alcohol.

I wanted to sponge the couch in rich warm colors that would work with our gold and dark red walls. We did a test piece with sea sponges and Lumiere on a small piece of hide.

 

Here are the painting supplies we used. We chose a small compact-foam roller for applying the base coat -- it went on quickly!

Rolling on Lumiere's Copper paint. 

After one coat of copper paint. It didn't cover the aqua completely, but since we were going to do three layers of sponging, this was good enough.

We decided to use a synthetic sponge made for cleaning George Foreman Grills instead of the sea sponges we used on the sample piece. These would give us finer detail and wouldn't go soft from all the paint we would need to use. (Destiny blogged about using this cool tool recently.)

 Sponging on Metallic Rust paint. This is when we noticed that the ridges in the sponge were making lines of sponged paint.

Off with the ridges!

After the base coat of Copper and sponging with Metallic Rust.

Sponging on the Crimson paint.

 After adding the layer of Crimson. By the way, the rolled-on layer of Copper took only about 10 minutes to dry before we could paint another layer. The sponged layers took longer -- maybe 15-20 minutes, since some of the paint ends up in thick little blobs that need more time to dry.

Adding the final layer! It's called Halo Pink Gold.

 Close up of the finished pattern.

Our new painted leather couch! We didn't seal the paint with Pledge with Future, as we do on shoes and bags, because we didn't want to make the surface any shinier. Also, with a sponged pattern like this, touch ups are invisible.

Happy couch painter enjoying the fruits of her labor!

Stamp on It!

There's one craft technique we haven't written about before and that's rubber stamping on shoes. It's a little tricky since shoes don't present a flat, hard surface like paper does, but with a little care and the right inks, the results can be very cool!

The key is to use the right kind of ink, the kind that will work on leather. You want to use alcohol inks, either StazOn or Ranger's Adirondack Alcohol Ink (both are easily found online and in crafts stores). They come in LOTS of colors and you can use them to tint metal, too. (I often use these inks to add a vintage patina or "paint" brass stampings, as I did on the heart shown here. In this case, I used a Q-Tip to apply the color. Once the ink is dry on the metal, it's permanent.)

After the ink, the next consideration is which rubber stamps to use. You won't be able to get as fine and crisp an image as you can on paper, but if you choose a stamp with somewhat less detail, you'll do fine. For my project, I chose alphabet and number stamps.

Next think about the kind of shoes you want to stamp on. You will need to be able to reach inside them and provide a firm "backing" so that when you press the stamp into the leather, the leather won't give. You can use your fingers to provide this backing or you can slide a small square of wood (or something similar) inside.

I had an old pair of very comfortable Dansko sandals that I thought would work. I didn't want to paint them, because I liked their natural leather color. But they were so PLAIN.... I just had to do something to them!

I started by cleaning the surface (rubbing them with a cotton ball dampened with alcohol), as I would if I were going to paint them. For my colors, I chose StazOn's Timber Brown, Olive Green and Rusty Brown (pepped up with a couple of squeezes of Adirondak's Raisin). Then I pressed the stamp into the ink pad and started stamping with abandon (which is pretty much how I do everything)!

That's when I discovered a little more finesse was needed. These particular stamps were not cut very deeply, and as a result, the edges of the stamp block picked up ink (see photo below) and transferred it to the sandals. That's what the little lines and squares are outside the numbers and letters.

I discovered that I could avoid the edges getting inked by dragging the stamp across the stamp pad instead of pressing it in. I could also use a little StazOn All-Purpose Cleaner and a Q-Tip to wipe off the corners before stamping.

I decided to stamp one sandal with letters and one with numbers. I also decided to angle some of the stamps, even do some of them upside down.

It took awhile to stamp all these little numbers and letters, but I just fired up my favorite Netflix TV show and the time passed quickly. I love the result!

I think it would be fun to try this on a handbag -- easy to reach inside it, too, to provide a firm surface for the stamps. If you try this technique, take before and after photos and send them in.

P.S.  These inks will also work on painted leather/manmade leather, as on this little Pewter-painted cross-body bag. It was my first stamping experiment, so it's a little messy, but it proves you can do it!

From Cheap to Classy

 About a year ago, I went on a mini shoe shopping spree. Zappos.com was having a high heel sale, and I succumbed to five, yes FIVE, pairs of high-high-heeled shoes. I only spent $60 total. What, like you've never done it? ... Don't judge me! Point is, most of the pairs had something interesting going on: zebra stripes, black pyramid spiked heel, cheetah print, buckles, or patent leather. A few of the pairs have seen the light of day at this function or that one. But the plainest pair just milled about in their box way in the back of my closet, sad and lonely.

Last week Margot and I decided to have a shoe day together. It had been awhile since our last day of creative madness. I did a quick scan looking for the perfect pair of shoes to play with and grabbed my poor neglected pumps. My life has been transforming lately and I wanted to make myself something awesome.  I sat down with Margot and started in with what I was planning.

The one thing I knew was I didn't want to repaint the entire shoe. It was covered with small metal studs and that would be a... well y'know... to paint around them. I figured I could paint above and below the studded area, though, so I masked that off, and prepped the "leatherette" surface by rubbing it with acetone. Then I painted the platform below the tape and the inside of the heel Sunset Gold.

At this point I was stuck. I was having a hard time deciding which colors looked best so I yelped at Margot for help. We both stared at our ring of paint chips, trying this color and that color. She mentioned using our sea sponging technique on the upper and I was sold. I decided on Metallic Bronze and poured some out, ready for the next step. Instead of a natural sea sponge like we normally use, however, she handed me a synthetic sponge made for cleaning George Foreman Grills.

These have an irregular pattern of little points, like a sea sponge, but since they are synthetic, those points never go soft from the wetness of the paint and lose their "pointiness." They also create a much finer pattern than even sea silk sponges do. I dabbed on one coat of Metallic Bronze. That's all I needed.

Next, the embellishments. I wanted a strap! I played with different ideas but Margot lobbied for using chain. Who could resist chain? Not I. So I pawed through our amazingly diverse stash until I found two lengths of chain, one brass and one copper, two copper washers, and two brass nautical stars. I measured around my ankle, and marked each length of chain. (A very handy way to mark chain is to secure a safety pin in the last link you want to keep.)

Margot nipped the chain for me (I wanted the copper chain to hang lower than the brass so I measured a longer length of copper), and we fixed split rings to both ends of each chain. The loop end of a toggle clasp was attached to a split ring on one end, then the three split rings were connected (see the photo above). On the other end, we used a lobster clasp on a split ring instead of the loop-and-ring combo. It was kind of like making an anklet.  The split ring with the clasp loop was stitched to the back of the shoe using a leather needle and Smoke Fireline thread.

The embellishment for the toe was created by stacking a brass nautical star onto a copper washer and gluing them together with E6000. I also glued dome findings onto the backs so they could be stitched onto the shoes. Once the E6000 had cured, all I needed was to mark where I wanted the embellishment on each shoe and sweet-talk Margot into using a leather needle and Smoke colored Fireline thread to attach them.

Neither of us could believe how awesome the transformation was! The heels turned out really stunning. No one would ever believe they only cost $4.95! The best part is they are mine!! Now I need to wear them somewhere... Hmmmm. Maybe I can just put my feet up and enjoy them, for now.