stasi's painted shoes.

on this latest edition of "projects that have taken me way longer than they should," we will be following the story of a pair of shoes.

in January, my sister Stasi entrusted me with a pair of wooden Dr Scholl's sandals she had found at a yardsale. she gave them to me so that i could paint something fun on them. i told her that it would be no problem, and i would get right on that because it sounded like a fun little project, and she should look forward to wearing them this summer. and then the sandals sat around in my closet for a few months (ok so maybe 8 is more than a few) until two weekends ago, when i was finally inspired to actually do something with them.

the inspiration came in the form of a can of stain. you see, i wasnt really loving the shoes' original honey-color, and i figured that a darker brown would be more likely to make a good background for the bright colored paints i had chosen.

first, i sanded them. i was border line terrified that this would ruin the shoes forever, but luckily for me their shiny finish came off with just a light sanding, and no harm was done to the overall shape of the shoes.

then i stained them the same color as our entry bench, and victoria's recipe card box, because that's the color i had on hand. and i was so excited with how they turned out that i forgot to take more pictures of them until i had already sketched out some designs and started painting.

after i added some details and shading, and i sent Stasi a teaser picture to see what she thought of them, and to see whether or not she would freak out that i had stained her shoes.

the verdict? she didnt even notice that they had changed colors. i guess it had been a while since she had last seen them. but the important thing is that she loved them. at least she loved them so far. because they weren't quite done yet at this point, since we both decided they could still use a little something to really make them extra special. we agreed that the answer was stripes.

so to make a long story short-ish and jump right to the end; after 8 months of waiting and two weekends of painting, these shoes are officially done-zo!

please to be enjoying a ton of detail shots from every angle imaginable:

outside of the left sandal 

inside of the left sandal 

outside of the right sandal 

inside of the right sandal 

verse across the back 

view from above 

 view from the front

close-up of the toe of the right sandal 

close-up of the toe of the left sandal 

the last shot i got before my camera battery died.

i'm super happy with how these turned out. i put two coats of varnish on them over the weekend, and as soon as i let that cure a little longer, i'm planning to wrap them up and send them to Stasi, since she has already told me she won't be able to wait until Thanksgiving to get them if she knows that they're done.

so my painting project queue is finally getting pretty small, (the only thing on it is my dining room canvases) but who knows if i will ever really run out of things to paint. probably never. because there are always things to be painted, and at the rate that it takes me to complete these kinds of projects (read: a very long time, i work super slow, i dont work well with time constraints or deadlines, i believe in the power of delayed-gratification) i'll probaly always have some little fun painting project on the back burner. and i like that.