DIY Galaxy Shoes: Transform Ordinary Canvas Sneakers into Cosmic Kicks

1. Introduction: Hey, I'm Tabitha. Today I am going to show you how I paint my shoes to look like a galaxy. This class is super easy and really fun. It's also pretty messy too, so be prepared. You're going to need a pair of black canvas shoes. They can also be fabric. They just can't be plastic, or vinyl or faux leather. You're going to need a little bit of tape and acrylic paint. I have black, white, blue, and purple. If you don't have purple, you can always mix your own. But on the very first pair of galaxy shoes, I found that mixing my own ended up in a purple that I didn't really love, so that's why I end up buying a purple. This is textile medium. It's like a thin liquidy paint stuff that you mix with your acrylic paint to make your paint more washable, durable and flexible. I recommend this for this project because shoes get a lot of wear and tear outside, especially if you're somewhere that rains or snows. I actually forgot to use this in this pair of shoes that I made today, so not super necessary. Just if you have it or you want to try it out, definitely, there's your excuse to give it a go. You'll need paint brushes. I just use these cheaper form brushes because I feel comfortable using them and I have them. If you have actually nice paintbrushes, feel free to use those, like whatever you're comfortable with. You'll notice halfway through, I ended up just painting these with my fingers. So even if you don't have paintbrushes, get some paint on there, let's do this. I'm super excited to see what you come up with. So let's get started. 2. Shoe Prep: One thing that I like to do before I get started is just do a quick Google search on my phone, and just take a look at what there is out there, glean some inspiration from Galaxy photos online available to us. I think it can be helpful and it can get your mind going in the right direction as far as this goes. The second step that we need to do is prep our shoes. If your shoes have laces, you can just take those out before we get started. We'll also be taping off the sole of the shoe, so that we don't get any paint on the rubber. So pretty simple, you're just going to want to start laying some tape down. I like to do small sections at a time because with the curvature of the shoe, it can be hard for one piece to make a full wrap around. We'll apply tape to the whole shoe, and then we will lay down our first layer of paint. I will see you in the next video. 3. Painting: Once your shoe is all taped and the shoelaces are removed, we are going to start mixing paint. Use whatever brand of paint that you want. I'm using Americana. I have primary blue and dioxazine, purple. Pick whatever color you like it doesn't really matter, you don't have to use the exact same thing that I am using. You want a pretty good size pile of paint for each color. Then we are going to mix with white to get varying shades of each color. Feel free to get messy. When I paint I know this is probably not the proper way of mixing paint or anything like that but I do what I want. I still have some pools of white over here and over here in case I need to make the colors a little bit lighter. Definitely wear gloves if you don't want your hands to be covered in paint or be more careful. I'm not super careful when it comes to painting. I'm going to start with blue because that is what's all over my paintbrush. I want to have a blue cluster right here on the front of the shoe. I'm just going to start applying it. Since I want it to look like it's fading, we're going to want to use the dark blue around it. The nice thing about using sponge brushes is you can do up and down pouncing motion to it so that it has a nice blend. For this one we're actually going to put some white in the center and so we'll want to blend that in as well. What you're wanting is it fading from light to dark. Again, we're just mapping out the colors. It doesn't have to be perfect right now. I know that I want this side to have some purple, so we're just going to add that right now. Since I know this area of the shoe is going to have laces, I actually want to keep it pretty dark, just me personally. Once you're satisfied with your first layer of paint, we can start to blend it just a little bit more. This is where we'll want to incorporate more white. I definitely want this to get a pretty white up here. Nice thing about this too is if you end up with a spot you don't like at the end, you can always just throw some more paint on there and call it good. This part I'd like to be a little lighter, so I'm actually going to spend some time brightening up back here. I'm pretty happy with the way that's looking so far as well. By the end, you should have something a little bit like this. Definitely give your shoe a once-over, just make sure that the paint is where you wanted it to be. I wanted to have a lot of gradients going on, I've got light to dark and I've got some dark blue here fading into the purple. In the black section, I added a little bit of white to give it some dimension. I like the look of the gray there.You just need to be careful in your super, super light spots that it's not pure white, because when we speckle the shoe next, we want to make sure we can see all the speckles. Definitely here on the side of darker, but don't be afraid to incorporate a lot of different shades in your shoe. Once you get to this point, I usually just like to stop do the next shoe and then at the same time will speckle both of them. 4. Stardusting: Once you're satisfied with how your paint job came out and your shoes are dry, we are going outside and add some stars. Grab your white paint and your husband's toothbrush and let's get started. I'm just kidding, don't use your husband's toothbrush, use an old toothbrush that nobody is using. It can be your husband's old toothbrush, maybe he accidentally left it on your side of the drawer a few times and you accidentally used it a few times for two weeks, and when you remember to tell him you are like, "oh yeah by the way, I keep using your toothbrush", and then he wanted a new toothbrush, because he couldn't use this one anymore, just use that one. It's a good one to use, I would recommend it, true story. I'll see you outside. Now that we're out here in the garage, I'm going to put some paint on my toothbrush in a manner similar to what you would do with toothpaste, then you're just going to just scrape your finger across the bristles in a scrubbing motion, getting the paint to flake onto your shoes, really just aim for haphazard, we're all about that. Just flick it on there anyway that you can and we'll touch it up a little bit after this. Here's what we have after we paint speckled them. I will admit, mine aren't perfect. There's a lot of big patchy blotches. I'm going to try and buff out a little bit and I'm going to use a toothpick to make some of my stars more sparkly. I'll zoom in a little more so you can see the process for that. To make a star more sparkly, I like to take a star that's already wonky shaped and you want to make a long straight line going one way and then a short straight line going another way. It's like a lopsided X, I don't know, I think it makes the stars up really sparkly. If you see a bare spot that you think needs a star, you can always just dot in little stars. This spot right here, I'm not in love with, so I'm going to cover it up just a little bit with some black paint. Since I want it to blend, I'm going to add some little white stars on top. Keep going with this method, just improving your stars and blotting out spots that you don't like as much and then we will peel the tape and add our laces and take a look and see how we did. 5. Final Touches: When your shoes are dry, feel free to go ahead and pull that tape off. If it turns out that some of the paint sipped underneath the tape, that's totally normal. Just take a knife or a pair of scissors and scrape at it. Definitely make sure that that paint is 100 percent dry when you do this, because if it's wet at all, it's just going to smear and make it worse. Also, exercise caution when using sharp objects. These are the finished shoes. I laced them all up all cute for her. These are for my niece. She has been so excited about these shoes and I can't wait to show her how they turned out. I also can't wait to see yours. So don't forget to share your pictures in the project gallery so I can see. If you have any questions, feel free to holla. Thank you so much for taking my class. Stay around.