Shoes

This update doesn't reeeeally have a costume to be attached to, however, I did technically do it with Ciel Phantomhive in mind.

I wasn't smart to realize I hadn't taken a before picture ahead of time, so I literally only have one picture where they are visible:



I bought these shoes from Value Village a couple years ago, specifically for the heel. I had originally planned to cover these shoes and use them for an 18th Century costume. However, this past weekend I had been throwing around the idea of dyeing these shoes and using them with the Ciel costume. I would much prefer to use actual lace-up boots like in the art book design, but I'm coming up against two problems. One: I can't find any lace-up boots that would work. Two: the ones I'm finding are way out of my price range.

So, I used a possibly non-typical way to dye these shoes. I used Dylon Ebony Black dye and according to the label the shoes are Thai Silk. Dissolved quite a lot of it in two cups of hot water and painted the stuff on the shoes with a sponge brush. The shoes were not really as absorbent as I expected them to be... so towards the end I started sprinkling the dye directly onto the shoes and using the wet sponge brush to dissolve and spread it out on the shoes. This significantly increased the saturation of the dye. There are a few spots along the bottom of the shoes that wouldn't really cover, but I figure I can go over the spots with a black sharpie (they're very small spots and so the not-quite-blackness of the sharpie would probably not be noticeable).

When these are all dry and done I will attempt to make some spats to go with them. I'm pretty excited about this part, hopefully time will allow for this additional little project.