Sassy Feet! blog

A Roundup of Shoe Inspiration from Robin

A few times a week, I get emails from my friend Robin with all kinds of cool, trendy shoes. I usually file the ones I think are the coolest and most easily recreated. She often thinks she is bombarding me, but I always say "Bring 'em on" and even share my very favorites with Margot as designs I think we should attempt. I want to share with you a few and give you my tips on how to shoe-it-yourself.

Let's start with something simple. Take this pair of "Myth" strappy suede sandals by Jimmy Choo, only $895.  All you would need is a pair of black strappy sandals, a medium square tipped brush, and a pop color like Citrine or Bright Gold.

Just mask off the criss-crossing straps you don't want any paint to get on and follow two straps up the shoe, painting as you go. After two, or three, coats, you'll have your own graphic design.

Next up is another fairly easy pair of
shoes to mimic. If you have red pumps, all you need do is tie a big floppy bow with dual-colored satin ribbon and stitch it onto the back of your heels with a leather needle and some Fireline Thread in Smoke color.

When we advise people to stitch on embellishments, we always recommend leaving the knot on the outside of the shoe, hiding it within the embellishment. This will prevent the knot from rubbing against your feet. Also, if you have trouble finding ribbon that is a reversible red/black like this one, you can use two separate colors of ribbon tied into one bow.

Chain makes a marvelous embellishment. It's usually inexpensive and comes in a lot of colors and shapes.

To do something similar to these black pumps, all you need is Fireline, a leather needle, a couple lengths of chain, scrap leather to make tabs, a few jump rings and an embellishment of your choosing. An embellishment with a place to attach the chain would work best.

Cut two strips of leather, 1/4" wide and 3/4" long, to make the tabs. Fold the tabs in half around the last link of chain and stitch them to the throat of the shoe, on the inner ankle side. Attach a jump ring to the other end of the chain and to the embellishment. Then stitch the embellishment to the shoe.

These next shoes are a little trickier in that they require the ability to paint with a semi steady hand. If I were doing these, I would probably lightly sketch my design onto the wooden platform with pencil, then use Neopaque Black, applied with a toothpick.

I'm a huge fan of the toothpick painting method. This is dipping the tip of the toothpick into the paint and stippling the paint onto the shoe, in a motion like the needle in a sewing machine. If you have the hand control of a pin striper, a fine line script brush will also work very well.

Lastly, a fun pair of thick-soled beach flip flops. I bet just about any message can be carved on the bottoms, in reverse, with an Xacto knife. Hmm.... I wonder if these work?!

Change Embellishments, Change the Look

I bought this pair of beautiful Steve Madden suede slingbacks a couple of years ago when I was still fooling myself that I still could walk in high heels.... Turns out, Destiny is the only high-heel diva at Sassy Feet! So I have several pairs of beautiful, unworn high heels that I have decided to put on ebay.

Fine, make a little extra money, always welcome. But I kept putting it off. There was really nothing interesting about doing this. More procrastinating. Then I realized I could embellish the shoes before I put them up for sale! Suddenly all my creativity came alive and I was really excited about the project!

I pulled all sorts of embellishments out of our Sassy Feet stash and tried them on for size, as it were. Today I want to show you the various choices I came up with, then show you the one I ended up choosing.

First I tried two different colors of an embellishment I purchased years ago at a FABULOUS embellishment shop in London. It's made of nice heavyweight rayon twisted cord. My assessment? Attractive, but nothing special. I kept looking.

Then I found some more interesting items. From left, an oversize brass mesh rose painted blue, a section of gray folded and rolled fabric trim that looked like flowers, and an embroidered and beaded piece of embellishment with an organza backing. The last one would have needed some stiffening to make the section extending beyond the vamp stand up and not get in the way of putting one's foot in the shoe. Hmm. More looking. 

The last contestant was an embellishment that Destiny created, which (shhh!) is listed on etsy as a pretty cool pendant. As I looked at it though, from a number of angles, I decided it looked a lot better from straight above than it did from the side. So, who was the winner??

It was the soft gray rose, which perfectly echoed the ultrasoftness of the suede. I glued these in place using Fabri-Tac, our glue of choice for attaching fabric to suede (unless we're going to stitch it down).

And here they are on ebay, size 9.5 if you're interested. They got two bids the first day they were up!

Here's a quick rundown of the other Steve Madden shoes I put on ebay, with their links (just click on the photo). I'll tell you next week how I created the little rose of metal chain on the brown suede platform sandals. It was a triumph of risk-taking and ingenuity, if do say so myself!

This last pair with the zippered ruffle across the instep appeared in Altered Couture magazine. To read the article on our website, click here.

By the way, it WAS a bunch of work to take photos, edit them, and list the shoes on ebay, but it was worth it for the fun of embellishing and seeing them online! 

Spring Colors + Your Questions Answered

No one is entirely sure who decides this stuff, but the Pantone company has announced the new colors for spring, and I thought you'd like to see them. Pantone specializes in systems for standardizing colors and color names, which enable everyone from designers to manufacturers to retailers to customers to be sure they are talking about the same color when they talk about, for example, emerald green.

Emerald is, in fact, the "color of the year" for 2013, a decision made by the same team of anonymous arbiters that decides on the colors for spring and fall. These 10 people meet in an all-white room in an unnamed European capital twice a year to look at colors and decide what they like best for the coming season(s). 

Now, I think the emerald in the photo above looks like emerald green, but I don't really think the color swatch does. Ditto some of the colors in the top image, taken from the Pantone site. Oh well, just think of me as your faithful reporter. Mine is not to reason why....

Applying Suede Dye

We just received this question in response to our blog on dying suede:

QUESTION: Thank you for this information! I am really excited to dye my light gray suede boots and see how they turn out! I only wanted to ask, is there a special brush you recommend for dying good quality suede boots? I am a bit afraid that it would come out blotchy.
--Margaret 

ANSWER: The Angelus suede dye we recommend comes with a little woolen dauber in the small bottle. If you buy a larger bottle (which I recommend -- suede really sucks up dye), you can order the daubers separately.

These work better than a brush in my experience because they hold lots of dye. Also, your dye job will look blotchy after one coat, maybe even after two (depending on how dark you are going to dye your light gray boots). But after the third coat, your boots should dry looking nice and even.

Once the suede dye dries, you brush up the nap on the suede with a soft brush -- nail brush or toothbrush will do -- and you'll be amazed at how great the suede looks.

Paint That Won't Stick

QUESTION: Do you know of any way to get a solid coat of Lumiere to stick better to shoe leather? in particular, I'm hoping for a way that will keep the paint from breaking apart and peeling at the shoe's crease points.

I've done a couple of pairs of oxfords in solid gold and solid silver, and they looked fantastic at first, but then the crease points started peeling after a couple hours of wear. Do you think it would help to heat-set it?  Maybe with a hair dryer or something?
Ronnie 

 

These clogs were so old, the leather had gotten really dry, and when I painted them, the paint cracked across the toe!

ANSWER: Lumiere usually sticks to leather just fine, even at the crease points, but there are a few things that could be causing your problem..

 

• Not prepping the leather sufficiently beforehand by rubbing with either alcohol (for leather) or 100% acetone (for manmade leather).
• Painting on very old, dry leather. 
• Painting on very, very soft leather, like the kind used for kid gloves. I think this kind of leather is just too pliable for the paint to stick really well. 
• Not letting the paint cure for 3 days before wearing the shoes. This is the amount of time the manufacturer recommends, though I sometimes ignore that myself.

That said, the manufacturer does say that if you are using Lumiere on fabric, it should be heat set, so that might help. A hot hair dryer would work -- for fabric they say to dry press for 30 seconds at whatever temperature the fabric needs, so the paint CAN handle high temperatures, such as you'd use to press linen. I have done this myself, paint-side up, and no harm comes to the iron. Obviously you can't use an iron on your shoes, I'm just saying you won't wreck the paint by getting it hot.

Before you start repairing your paint job, lightly sand down the cracked paint, and wipe away the paint dust with rubbing alcohol before you reapply the paint.

Let me know if anything I have mentioned might have caused the problem, and I want to hear how your "repairs" turn out.  The more we can teach each other what works and what doesn't, the more fabulous shoes we will create!

Tips on Doing Cowboy Boots

 QUESTION: I just stumbled upon your blog on painting Western boots, "Go West Young Woman."  I am intrigued, to say the least!  I am going to attempt this myself, but before I do I wanted to ask you if you had any tips or recommendations on the actual painting?  Such as, did you use painters tape to create crisp lines, or did you paint freehand? 

I can't thank you enough for sharing this idea!  My boot collection is about to become very colorful. Yay!
Lisa

ANSWER: You are going to have so much fun painting your boots! I did my boots freehand, though it might be good to use painter's tape to mask off the sole at least. (My colleague Destiny masks off lots of areas before painting so it's really a matter of taste.)

My own strategy was to paint from light to dark. In other words, I applied the lightest color of paint first and didn't worry about staying exactly within the stitching lines of the boot. This is because as you apply successively darker colors of paint, they will cover any "mistakes" made with the lighter color of paint.

Depending on the original color of your boots and the colors and brand of paint you choose, you will need two to three coats of paint. I did my boots in front of my computer playing DVDs of old TV shows, and the time passed fairly quickly.

There's a little more information in our book about painting cowboy. Good luck -- feel free to send me before-and-after photos for our blog!

 Good News

The next issue of Altered Couture will feature three pairs of our shoes, and the issue after that will include three more pairs and a handbag. Destiny and I are definitely on a roll!

More Shoes -- and Bags -- From Our Fans

I've been hoarding photos of painted shoes and bags that our fans have been sending me, and it's time to stop keeping them to myself. Enjoy!

This pair is called Beetleboots and they were sent in by costumer Cherries Jubilee of Cherries' Orchard. They are painted in several colors of gleaming Lumiere. Dragonflies and other bugs hang from the laces. One boot has a vintage watchface painted on the toe, the other has a collection of cool steampunk-y gears. 

Sandy painted these black Uggs for a woman in Pennsylvania who runs a wolf sanctuary and a B&B, a place Sandy and her husband love to visit. The black wolves are leather appliques, and the stars and moon sparkle with Glitter It Glaze.

Ronnie sent in this photo of some wingtip oxfords he painted and glittered with a distressed effect. The colors on the front fade from Pearlescent Blue to  Metallic Silver on the side. In the back, they shift from Pearlescent Violet to Metallic Silver on the side. Next he added Ultramarine and Fuchsia Glitter It Glaze on the vamp with a light layer of Neopaque Black over them to mute the glitter effect.

Ronnie says if you add the black while the Glitter It is still slightly wet, the glitter tends to accumulate in small chunks, which he thinks is a pretty cool distressed effect. Last of all, Ronnie painted stars in the area where his laces will go. 

Barbara found us after a Google search and loved the post I wrote last year about putting metallic leafing on a pair of worn-out Danskos. She said she's thrilled with the results!

Laura wrote that she loves having fun, funky shoes, "but with my back as lousy as it is, I refuse to get anything other than comfortable supportive shoes, and those don't tend to come in funky and fun." So she took an old but favorite pair of shoes that were starting to look a little frumpy and sad.

Well, they aren't frumpy anymore! Laura says she's so excited by how these turned out, she predicts she'll soon have a closet full of glittery, jewel-toned shoe! (P.S. These were painted in Crimson and Pearlescent Violet, then glittered with Really Red and Royal Purple Glitter It Glaze.

Angela, a friend from my wearable art group, sent these pictures of some slides she painted for a lawyer friend in the hopes it would add some pizzazz to her legal life. She experimented with a Metallic Olive Green background and Pearlescent Violet zebra stripes, but didn't like how they turned out so she kept going. She ended up with this wonderful melange of the green and violet with Metallic Bronze and Pearlescent Blue, applied first with a paint brush then with a cosmetic sponge to get the little lines and dabs. (I did a blog post a while back on using cosmetic sponges to get cool effects -- here's the link.)

Angela also turned two of her friends on to painting on leather, with these results:

Linda wanted to tone down and update the look of this woven leather purse

Debbie transformed these Chinese Laundry slides with fabulous results!

Lauren started thinking about doing some wedding boots last year and we swapped emails answering her questions and encouraging her to plunge into painting cowboy boots (her eclectic choice for bridal shoes). She fell in love with painting them and has done SEVERAL pairs since, but she has now gotten back to her original plan. 

She writes: "I finally get to say "I do" on November 23, and I will be sure to share the pics from the day, but I was too excited not to share now. The wedding was originally scheduled in July of this year but I took a job that took me to London for the Olympics, so of course I had to paint a Team USA pair! I've included a pic of those as well."

I want to close by saying that it has been suggested I write shorter blogs, and I promise to start doing so next time, but I just couldn't postpone showing any of these!

FAQs From Our Fans

Before we get to questions and answers, I want to tell you that Destiny and I have completely updated the Sassy Feet website -- new and bigger before-and-after photos of shoes and bags, plus links to our two YouTube videos, our Facebook page, our Twitter account and our Pinterest photo boards. Whew! Go enjoy this stuff so we'll know it was worth doing!

Now to the Q&A. We get several emails a week with questions about painting, glittering and embellishing shoes, and we answer each one of them personally. I am going to try posting these more frequently since some of you may have the same questions. Let's get started.

QUESTION: I finally had some time to sit down with your paints and give this a shot. Took a pair of old cap-toe shoes that have been collecting dust for a while, and decided to gild them up, a la Martin Margiela (whose biggest size is three sizes too small for my colossal feet). I used three shades of Lumiere.  Your Glitter It Glaze is on the middle section.  

They turned out fantastic -- hopefully the first of very many. One question -- if I wanted to do more of a distressed look, do you think it would work to rub on some Neopaque Black and then quickly rub it off?

I'm indebted to your site for its exceptional clarity and ease of presentation.

Ronnie  

For just $525, you can have these lovelies....

ANSWER: Thanks for your kind words -- and your shoes look great!  Yes, you can give them a distressed look by rubbing on Neopaque Black, just remember that distressing doesn't happen evenly, so rub in on lightly and unevenly. And keep a damp rag nearby to immediately remove any black that goes on too heavy or you otherwise don't like the look of.

By the way, have you seen Martin Margiela's new paint splattered sneakers? $525 for something you could SO do yourself! And they would look better, too....

QUESTION: I really, really like your shoes and I thank you for being so generous with your knowledge. My name is Jill and I live in Perth, Western Australia. I am a textile artist who paints, dyes and sews wearable art. I have been looking for Pledge Premium Floor Finisher with Future Shine but it is not available in Australia.

We do have Pledge Wood Floor Finish with  Future ^® Shine and Pledge Tile & Vinyl Floor Finish with Future^® Shine. Are either of these suitable to finishing the painted shoes?

ANSWER: Oh, good question! The marketing meisters at Pledge changed the name -- you can use the Wood Floor Finish with  Future ^® Shine for sealing your shoes.

QUESTION: Can you use Lumiere paint on fabric such as suede? If so, how would you seal in the paint? Also, can you use Lumiere  on Nike Air Force Ones? Their shoes are made of genuine leather.

Manmade suede boots painted with Lumiere -- if you click to see this image full size, you'll see the nap is no longer soft

ANSWER: You can use Lumiere on genuine or manmade suede. (Genuine suede is made from leather, manmade suede is actually fabric.) The only downside is, it will no longer retain its soft nap. The paint adheres well, but it makes the suede or manmade suede hard to the touch. If you are working with genuine suede, you could use suede dye instead. We wrote about this in an earlier blog. 

As to the Nike Air Force Ones, they should take the paint well, as long as they are leather, manmade leather or fabric. But  paint won't stick for long to the plastic Nikes swooshes and soles. (If the Nikes' soles are rubber instead of plastic, however, read on.)

QUESTION: Hi! I love your book and can’t wait till next weekend when I’ll have time to try my first pair of shoes. Here's my question. I have a few pairs of sandals that have rubber soles.  Can I use the same paint to decorate the sides of the soles, or do I need to use something else?  Also, is a different kind of prep required for the rubber parts?

Susan 

Before and after sneakers, painted and glittered, and with the toes and soles tinted with StazOn ink

ANSWER: The Lumiere paints we use and recommend are not made to stick to rubber, though one artist I spoke to says she always uses them for the soles of her sneakers. For me, they've always peeled off whenever I applied them to rubber!

What I use for coloring the rubber soles of shoes is alcohol-based stamp-pad ink. To do this, you'll need:

• Rubbing alcohol and a couple of cotton balls
• 1 bottle of re-inker for StazOn or Adirondack stamp pads (not the pads themselves), which come in LOTS of colors
• Something to squeeze the ink into
• A little paint brush you can throw away

Before you apply the ink, rub the soles with a cotton ball dampened with rubbing alcohol to be sure they are clean and ready to absorb the ink.

Squeeze some of the ink into a cup and use a cheap brush to brush it onto the soles and toes. One coat should do it. The ink will penetrate the rubber and stain it. Hang onto the little bottle in case you need to do touch ups later.

QUESTION: Do you guys have much experience in painting canvas shoes? That's what I usually do. I normally use fabric paint (since canvas is fabric, and the paint is washable/waterproof.) But I need an emerald green color for a specific project I'm doing, and I haven't found any fabric paint that color.

So I used a regular craft acrylic paint and mixed it with robin's egg blue and white to create the turquoise look I wanted. But I am worried about how the craft acrylic will last -- is it going to chip off? So I'm thinking about using a paint sealer. But does that give it a rigid finish, or can the finished product bend and move?

Eliana

ANSWER:  When you use craft or artists acrylic paint on shoes of any kind, you end up with the problem that this paint isn't formulated to be flexible. It can crack and peel, especially if applied thickly. You can get around that in the future by adding a little of what's called fabric medium.

As to the fabric shoes you've already painted, adding a sealer isn't the answer. Sealers protect from the outside, where as cracking or peeling is something that happens on the inside -- between the canvas and the paint. (FYI, if you use our sealer to seal painted shoes, it will flex and bend. You won't get a rigid finish.)

So your craft-acrylic-painted shoes may crack and peel, but If it were us, we'd just wear them and enjoy them and see what happens. Good luck!

QUESTION: I made several pairs of shoes using comic strip papers and Mod Podge. Problem is, the comics keep cracking and pulling away at stress points on each side. The shoes are of manmade materials and I did not prep them in any way.

Kelly 

ANSWER: Lots of bloggers and even some supposedly reputable magazines say you can use Mod Podge or glue to attach comic strips to shoes, but they simply don't last! They WILL crack and peel off because paper is neither sturdy nor flexible -- it tears when it bends. And Mod Podge is not flexible when it dries, so it will crack. Even if you use a glue that will be flexible when it dries, any paper that's attached to the surface of your shoes will crack when the shoe bends.

What I do with cool paper designs that I want to put on shoes is I scan them into my computer, then print out the scans on cotton fabric that's made to go through an inkjet printer. Then I glue down the fabric using a glue like Fabri-Tac (if the shoes are leather or fabric) or The Ultimate (if the shoes are manmade leather). You can buy sheets of inkjet fabric in many craft and fabric stores. I wrote a blog post about this awhile back -- check it out!

QUESTION: I have seen lots of blogs that have instructions on how to glitter your own shoes. I know you have the special paint and sealer to do it, but if I just wanted to use glue and loose glitter what glue would work the best?

I have tried Mod Podge and it cracks. Some people have used rubber cement, fabric glue, tack glue, gemstone glue. I am using it on pumps that are faux leather. They tend to crack where your toes bend. Also I know you use acetone to clean your shoes before painting them. Will wiping them with acetone also cause the glue to adhere better?      

                                                                                

Katrina

ANSWER: Yup, all the glues we've tried for applying glitter do crack eventually (plus the glitter comes off all over your house, car, etc.), which is why we use a clear glaze made for leather and manmade leather as the base for our glitter. You can buy a bottle of it without the glitter in it, and add your own if you want. It's $5.99 and if that's all you buy, it is light enough that we can ship it first-class, which is pretty cheap. One bottle will cover at least two pairs of shoes.

By the way, wiping manmade leather (GENTLY) with acetone will make glue adhere better, but it won't do anything to keep it from cracking where the shoe bends. Nor will a sealer (see Eliana's question above.)

And that's it for this week! Go forth, use your new knowledge and PAINT SHOES!!

All About Dying Suede

Suede -- absolutely lovely stuff but once you paint it (which you can do), all that softness and subtle, variagated response to light disappears. Now, this can be a good thing if you suede shoes or purse are old and worn.

But what if you just want to change the color? I have found n excellent answer to that question and it's called Angelus Suede Dye.(You can find it online -- I buy mine from a site called www.turtlefeathers.net.) I have used it before and written about it here, and last week I tried a new project, a pair of ultra-discounted Ugg boots.

I got these awhile back for $39.99 from Decker's Factory Outlet Store in Ventura, CA, which also carrys Teva and Simple brands. (They don't have a website, but if you Google "Deckers Ventura" you'll find info and maps.) You can probably find other Uggs bargains online, if you're interested, since this is the time of year when no one else is buying warm fuzzy boots!

Anyway, these boots were a perfectly decent color, but since my last pair of Uggs (which I wore to a frazzle -- it isn't as warm here on the central California coast as you might think...) was purple, I couldn't very well switch to a plain "sand" color.

I decided to aim for a dusty rose and looked through the Angelus colors. No dusty rose. But there was a shade called Wine and advice on using their Neutral dye to lighten other colors. So I bought two bottles of Wine and one of Neutral to mix together.

Here are two VITAL tips about dying suede. First, wear latex gloves! Unlike the Lumiere paint I work with all the time, suede dye does not wash off with a little soap and scrubbing! It lasts and lasts and alarms your friends and family when they see the scary splotches of colors on your hands.

Second tip: Be prepared to do three coats. The reason for this is that it's hard to get the dye to absorb evenly, but three coats seems to be the key.  I let each coat dry overnight. For these boots, after the first coat, I didn't think the color was rose-like enough, so I poured in a bottle of Lilac suede dye that I had leftover from a previous project. Two coats later, I had a pair of crushed-raspberry Uggs to die for, pun intended.

As you can see, I also applied the dye to the rubber sole. It seemed to work pretty well, but I'll have to let you know how it wears over time.  I have these boots on right now and I love them! The color makes my feet happy!

Destiny has also used the Angelus Suede Dye on a shoulder bag she painted. She loved the contrast of the suede and smooth-leather panels, but felt the gray just had to go.

Now, another key factor in dying suede -- as in dying fabric -- is taking into account the existing color. Dye penetrates the leather (or fabric), unlike paint, which creates a layer over it. So whatever color you start with needs either to be factored into the color you want to get, or be overwhelmed by it.

I factored the slight sand color of my Uggs into my color choice; Destiny chose the overwhelm method and dyed the suede areas on this purse a deep purple, which she got by adding a little black suede dye to a bottle of Lilac.

By the way, she did the top section with Neopaque Black topped with Royal Purple Glitter It! The lower panel is done in several shades of Lumiere. (She has this one for sale in her Etsy shop, which will be back up as soon as she unpacks from vacation!)

Blue (and Black) Suede Shoes

I have been in love with suede since I discovered its sensual softness back in high school. I first splurged my clothing allowance on a brown suede jacket, then my graduation-gift money on a knee-length suede coat the color of a Russian Blue cat. Which is gray. Yum. I felt SO sophisticated!

So there's no way I'm going to cover up the delicious texture of suede on shoes even with the Lumiere paint I love to use. However, there's no denying that suede shoes CAN come in colors that don't go with anything in my wardrobe. Like these salmon-colored wedges, which were actually on sale and in my size. 

The solution I found was a wonderful suede dye from Angelus, which I discovered online at Turtlefeathers. I chose two colors, Purple and Blue, because when you're dyeing, you have to go darker than the color you start with. I used the purple on the upper of the shoe and around the top of the wedge, then transitioned to blue to create the effect of a night sky.

It takes two or three coats to cover, but the dye is not expensive and it goes on easily. When you're done, you just brush up the surface of the shoe and it's as soft as when you started. The shoe I ended up with is called Skyline Wedge.

Of course, I also did a few other things to this shoe besides dye the suede, but that's the kind of girl I am....

Margot Does Steve, Part 2

My second adventure with Steve Madden shoes (see my previous post about his hightops) went to the other end of the spectrum: I started with a pair of elegant and sexy suede heels in a loden green.

Now, I know better than to paint suede. A coat of leather paint will adhere just fine, but the shoe will lose its lovely soft texture and dappled look. So the shoe was going to stay green. That's when I remembered the chunky fluorite nuggets I had bought at a bead show last summer. They looked like little rocks with holes through the middle. I thought their rough texture would look wonderful against the suede.

But I wanted something to use with them as a centerpiece. Again, I was hunting for a real contrast. I decided on 20mm amethyst beads and used silver-plated beading wire to string them on. Wire-wrapped loops on the ends gave me something to stitch them down with.

 I really liked how that came out, but with shoes, you always need to add something more, something beyond what you originally conceived. That's when the design really takes off. I looked at the shoes with their great "rock candy" stitched on and thought, What if the heels were an amethyst color too?

So I went to my favorite source for suede dye, www.turtlefeathers.net, and ordered a bottle of Angelus brand suede dye for $3.50. Two coats later, the heels of these "new and improved" Steve Maddens were a wonderful deep purple. I named them Rock Candy Heels.

Note: I made a couple extra sets of the Rock Candy embellishments and they are available in my webstore, along with some in different colors. Click here.