Glitter Flats (or How I Glued the Carpet)

Today I noticed I had two things lying around taking up space that I was hesitant to get rid of: a pair of old, comfy, well-worn (read: dirty) canvas flats, and a big container of multi-colored foil glitter. Remembering this tutorial, I knew I had a potentially adorable pair of shoes just waiting for me to bring it to life. Now, I did follow most of the main points in this tutorial, but there were a few things I had to do to prepare the shoes, as they'd gathered a lot of cat hair and dust from sitting in storage. Besides that, I had worn them for two straight summers, so they weren't clean by any stretch of the imagination. Just for practice, I'll do a step-by-step write-up to show what I did. In addition, all I have is Mod Podge for paper, but I decided to use it anyway.

**Before I start, I need to warn you. This has the potential to be a very messy project. If you are at all clumsy, like me, or absent-minded, also like me, put down a LOT of newspaper/craft paper/drop cloth. Unless you like gluey, glittery mess everywhere. In that case, forget I said anything. Moving on.

Here's my set-up:

And my assistant:

Yes, she's missing a sock. I don't know how she always manages to lose only one sock. As you can see below, the shoes were covered in cat hair, and the rubber toes were super scuffed.

The shoes were adorned by these tattered bows. I didn't like the bows, and I didn't fancy trying to glue glitter to them.

First thing's first: get rid of the cat hair. As an owner of four cats and a dog, I am always stocked-up on lint rollers.

Then, I needed to clean the rubber toes. A little water and some minty-fresh toothpaste (with Scope Outlast!) took the dirt right off. Any toothpaste will do. You don't need anything fancy; it's just all I had. I would avoid using a purely gel toothpaste, but if it's got some gel in it, it should still work.

A little bowl of water.

I covered the canvas portion of the shoe with paper towel to keep it dry.

Here you can see it made quite a difference:

All clean!

Next, to take off those bows! I used a seam ripper and they came off with no trouble.

Much better.

I decided to put tape over the rubber so I wouldn't get glitter on it.

It didn't really work.

Maybe Vaseline would have been better.

This is after two coats:

I definitely got glitter on the inside.

A bit messy.

I tried drying them a bit with a hair dryer...

...but my assistant decided she'd been patient long enough and started screaming. Like that kind of screaming that means she's pretty sure she is actually dying. In my haste to comfort her, I knocked over my open bottle of Mod Podge, and of course it spilled a bunch on the carpet. Why was it still open? I really need to learn to pay attention. I didn't get any pics of the carnage, but thankfully Mod Podge is fairly easy to clean with just soap and water.

I let the shoes dry for about two hours and checked to see if I needed to add another coat. There were a few spots where the canvas was showing through, so I could have just filled in the holes, but I opted for another thick coat. I let them dry for about another hour, just to the point that the glue was still tacky but had turned clear. At this point, I needed to get the excess glitter off of the rubber pieces. It peels off easily enough, but I didn't want to risk pulling on some of the glitter on the toe and having it peel off any of the glitter on the canvas. I used a utility knife to cut along the edges of the toes and the soles (being careful not to cut too deep), then peeled away. For the really sticky bits, I used a q-tip dipped in nail polish remover. While doing this, I rested the shoes on my leg. I definitely scraped up the spot that I rested the shoes on, because (surprise!) foil glitter has sharp edges. Don't do that.

Here they are after I got the extra glitter off:

I took them in the garage and sanded along the inside of the foot hole so my feet wouldn't get scraped up by the glitter while wearing the shoes. I then sprayed them with two coats of clear glaze, as recommended in the tutorial I was following. To protect the inside, I stuffed them with newspaper. 

Before glaze.

After glaze.

Let me tell you, as a fledgling crafter, I had never used clear glaze (or even heard of it, at that). I went to Michael's on a quest to find some, and couldn't find anything that mentioned flexibility. I ended up getting this one:

Based on the description, it's comparable to what the artist used in the cited tutorial (she used Dresden Clear Glaze. Upon further research, however, I did find a few spray glazes that may work better in the future (not that this didn't work beautifully). Design Master makes two products I hope to try out soon, one called Super Surface Sealer, which mentions flexibility with a satin finish, and another called Master Shine, which boasts a flexible, high gloss finish. Both seem perfectly suited to this project, as well as many other projects.

Here is the finished product:

I love them. I adore them. I was worried the canvas wouldn't work as well as a hard-sided shoe like in the tutorial, but it worked great! I want to wear these everywhere. I may even make a couple more pairs in solid colors.

Anyway, thanks for reading and enjoy making your own glitter flats!