Toms Tutorial from Yellow Bird + Yellow Beard

Hi Everyone! I've owned my navy blue Toms since 2006 when they first came out. But I've hardly ever worn them because I always feel so weird wearing navy blue shoes with navy blue jeans. I guess it makes me feel like I'm wearing a onesie on my bottom half only, hehehe. This last week I finally decided to add a little color to my Toms so I can start wearing them again. Perhaps you'd like to make your Toms a little extra special too?

What you will need:::

A pair of canvas shoes

Fabric paint

Q-tips {or paint brush}

I went with some pretty low key colors for my Toms because I didn't want to constantly feel like my shoes clash with my outfit. {Actually, if we're being honest, The Beard told me I needed to go with low key colors because he knew if I chose a bright color I'd feel like I needed to match it. At least he understands my neurosis right?} Since mine are navy blue I chose white and baby blue. 

I didn't want to completely cover any sections of my shoes and I also didn't feel confident enough in my sketching abilities to really do anything elaborate so I decided to just go with some cute little polka dots.

For starters I took the lid off the fabric paint and dipped the Q-tip directly into the paint bottle. I discovered that the canvas absorbed more of the paint than I expected so I had to get a quite a bit of paint on the Q-tip for it to really show up well. 

I began with the heel and sporadically placed dots of white paint. I skipped the middle portion of the shoe which I wanted to leave as it was and moved to the front part. It was really hard for me to place the dots randomly and not form a grid, but I think I did ok!

After I'd put as many white dots as I wanted I filled in the empty sections with baby blue dots.

At this point I thought I was finished but decided I just couldn't live without at least a tiny pop of contrasting color. What better place than the tags? I carefully stuck a piece of masking tape behind each of the tags to keep paint off the canvas behind them.

Then I used a paint brush to give the tags a very thin layer of paint so the letters would still show through.

Ta Daa! 

Now I have personalized Toms that will go with a wide variety of outfits. Just a splash of pattern and color was exactly what they needed.

I hope you have fun painting your Toms as well!

xoxo

Janee

For more fun DIY's from Janee, you can hop on over to her blog Yellow Bird + Yellow Beard!