DIY Bride(smaid)

Countdown is on, October 6th is when I need to be ready for my best friends wedding. I'm having to do a lot of adjustments and diy for my outfit so I thought I'd share the progress. We are all to be in black cocktail dress, lbd, and she wants us to pop with colour. For us to look like a group she suggested blue shoes as the colour will match the groomsmens colours. The major problem is that there aren't a lot of blue shoes out there, the ones that are filling the stores are more of a lighter, turquoise blue and she wants a darker, closer to royal shade (we have paint chips to match the colour). Most of the shoes available in that colour have a gross fake velvet texture, are 6 inches high and strappy and just GROSS. I came across a pair of white shoes while I was shopping with my mom and they fit my thin feet in an incredible way. I have a very hard time finding heels and I end up with a lot of maryjane styles (I still remember my shoe flying across the church when I was a little girl during a song I performed that had a few small dance moves involved). I knew these white shoes were the one but how to make the man made material blue and make it stick. SPRAY PAINT. We ran back across the street to the hardware store and picked out a colour and the results are PERFECT.

As you can see there are some mistakes, I should have put more painters tape on the inside toe and the side seems need to be touched up with a small paint brush. After I had taped the parts of the shoe that I did not want blue (it was a lot of tape to be safe - and TAPE THE INSIDE OF THE SHOE TOO) I did a thin coat on one half of the shoe, let it dry for an hour and a half and did the other side. After it had dried for 3 hours I did another thin coat all over the shoe. Note: while doing the first coat there seemed to be some spots, almost like little bubbles that took no paint. Rest assured, they were completely covered with the 2nd coat. Don't try and completely cover the surface during the first coat as you'll end up with blobs in some spot and it won't be even. I'm very happy with the results and I'm excited to do this for costumes in the future. Although I packed my suitcase well, the paint did chip off a tiny bit in a few corners on my flight home. Don't think of this as a permanent colour change, it's more of a temporary as the paint will crack in a few spots over time.

Next step is the dress. My beautiful friend in Seattle gave me a dress to wear and she is also a childhood friend of the bride. Although her and I are very close in size, her bosom is a little more generous than mine. I've slowly taken in the side and now need to finish the fine details. I'm also going to shorten the dress by a couple of inches. Here is the before and I'm hoping to have the after in a week!

And yes, my head is turned because I'd been up in the bush with the dogs, working in the backyard with my parents and it just didn't match the dress :-)

Shoes from paylesshttp://www.payless.com/store/