17 DIY Clothes Shoes outfit ideas

DIY Saddle Shoes Tutorial – Dream a Little Bigger Need a pair of saddle shoes for a costume or just because they are super cute but don’t want to spend big bucks on them? Make your own cheap (around 6 bucks!) pair of faux saddle shoes! Shoes have always, always been my thing and when I first started this blog I even made over one cheap pair of shoes a week in my ‘Shoesday Tuesday’ feature. The very first ever Shoesday was the very first iteration of this DIY Saddle Shoes tutorial and it did really, really well. In fact, it kind of put my little 2-month old blog on the map, you could say. Way back 6 years and almost 6 months ago I said that shoes would always be my thing for 3 important reasons… Because if I gain weight or lose weight, my shoes always fit. For some reason, you can get away with crazy shoes and still be considered respectable. Trends come and go, but classics will always be classics. Standing the test of time, these 3 bullet points are still valid in my life today 🙂 But over time my crafty methods have changed a bit and I’ve got a LOT more experience under my belt making things on the regular… like 77 more months experience making things. And the way I did it back then worked out okay, but the way I do things today make a little bit more sense as far as durability goes. Now this isn’t such a big deal if you’re making your own pair of cheap saddle shoes to rock out at a costume party with a poodle skirt, but if you’re actually going to insert these cuties into your wardrobe and wear them regularly, well, making them with color that sticks around is kind of important. Back in the day (April 18, 2012, to be exact), I used a Sharpie brand fabric marker and this project was quick and simple. Like with pretty much all of the shoes I made back then, because I was making a pair a week and her closet is MUCH bigger than mine, I gave them to my sister. And just a few months of wear later, she had worn the saddle bits right off of the shoes. I remember seeing them in the shoe bin as I walked in the front door and going, ‘are those the saddle shoes?’ Yep. They were. And the areas that had been black were suddenly such a light gray you almost didn’t see the contrast. So today we’re using paint and to save some $$$ we aren’t even going to use fabric paint because it can be kind of expensive depending on the size you purchase and because if you don’t paint a lot of fabric that’s just a waste of money. But by using paint instead of a fabric marker, we’re going to create some kicks that you can kick around in for ages before that color goes ANYWHERE. In fact you’re far more likely to mess up your white bits than ever wear off the color like my sis did back in the day. This year, as I was making my umpteenth pair of saddle shoes in plain ol’ black something clicked in my head… why do they have to be black? And so I made 2 pairs in 2018… a black and white pair and a bright ass pink pair that make me crazy happy 🙂 So grab your favorite color of paint (or a color that will match your poodle skirt) and let’s hop on this and make some cheap saddle shoes, shall we? Make a pair of DIY Saddle Shoes for as little as $6. For this project you will need: White canvas sneakers Paint (I’m using Martha Stewart Satin Craft Acrylics Martha Stewart Satin Craft Acrylics in Beetle Black and Camellia Pink) Stiff paintbrush (fabric paintbrush) Fabric medium or water Cotton swabs First up you’ll need to snag a pair of white sneakers similar to the ones above. These days I’m straight up about Keds and the original Keds Champion are the same style as the shoes above. If I were making these for regular wear, I’d go with the more expensive shoes because I’m getting old and getting old sucks and my feet hurt all the freaking time 🙂 But since these are just occasional the black and white pair came from Walmart for about $6 and the pink and white pair came from Target for about $10. There are some major differences in the 2 cheap pairs I got. First up the Walmart pair are nice and white but the padding in them is the pits. Like, my feet hurt after less than an hour in them. The next pair I got were from Target and the white is really blue, which you can’t really tell in the photos, but side by side the Walmart pair actually looks white and the Target pair looks kind of weird light and really bright blue-ish white. But the padding in them is a lot better and I can wear them comfortably for much longer. Buying my normal size in both pairs, the Walmart pair was as expected fit-wise and the Target pair was about half a size too big. Okay. So. Got your white canvas sneakers figured out and know if you’re spending $6, $10 or $40 after my extremely long commentary about your options? Excellent! 🙂 Were you also wondering why it looked like my sneakers were on a hill? Marla was behind the scenes helping out with this fabulously simple shoe makeover 🙂 To keep things cost effective we’re going to use regular craft acrylic paint for this project. After experiencing issues with far more bad paint in my stash than good, I one day got frustrated and threw it all in the trash. I mean, some of these bottles are from the beginning of this blog and 6-year-old paint has the totally wrong texture. Since I’ve started fresh with my new