SHARK BAIT!

I'd posted some time ago about ICON shoes . They're unique in that works of art are printed on leather shoes. They come in mules, boots, ballerina flats, oxfords, loafers.

They even have purses. You can check out their website here. Upon investigating these shoes, I found out they were waaaay out of my budget.
So, I decided to make a fake pair. To the left you see an old pair of navy blue, leather loafers that I have had for some time. These are the ones I plan to convert into Fake ICONS.


These are authentic, used ICON shoes. They were on sale on E-Bay. I don't buy used shoes because they have already been molded by the previous owner.

After viewing various creative shoes on Flickr I decided to do mine a little differently. I chose SCUBA divers and sharks.

On one shoe would be SCUBA divers photographing undersea life.

On the other shoe would be sharks poised to attack the clueless divers.

Since my printer doesn't work, I took my thumb drive with the pictures to Staples. I had the clerk print two laser copies. I wanted two just in case I messed up.

Lucky for me I had Staples Reward points that I used toward the copies and ended up paying only 22 cents. Even without the reward points it wouldn't have been expensive.

The Team
Painter's tape, scissors, acrylic paints, permanent markers, brushes, decoupage glue, old newspapers, water (to rinse brushes), newspaper, laser printed pictures.

1. I started out by taping off the areas of the shoe I didn't want painted.

2. Next, I painted the vamp of the shoe with the blue acrylic paint. This was to simulate water in an ocean.
3. After the blue paint had dried, I placed random lightly colored black paint to give it texture. Then, I dry brushed green paint haphazardly to imitate seaweed. I used a red permanent marker to draw the coral and orange and white paint for the tips of the coral.

4. I cut out the figures from my laser print along with some of the background and began gluing in place using decoupage glue.
I used over six coats of decoupage allowing each to dry between coats. These are the shoes after drying and removing the tape.

5. Here are the finished shoes after being polished to as high a shine as I could get. Click on the picture to enlarge.

I was pleased with the way they turned out. I call it; SHARK BAIT

That's It ***