DIY R2D2 Painted Shoes Tutorial

I’m so excited to share this with y’all today. I’ve really wanted some nerdy shoes as of late. I’ve been hoping to get some of the adorable Vans Star Wars themed ones, but they run a rather hefty price tag. I’ve seen some gorgeous painted Toms (I even have a pair) and have scoured Etsy staring at all of my nerdy shoe options, but again, the budgetary constraints make buying hand painted shoes hard. Then it hit me: I’m a relatively crafty person – I should be able to do this myself. The wheels started moving and low and behold, I have my own nerdy shoes. I wanted to share my R2D2 painted shoes tutorial with everyone so you, too, can create your own shoes.

 

Most of the painted shoes you can buy are done on Toms, but I just couldn’t bring myself to buy a pair, especially when I could’ve potentially screwed up this whole painting on them business. Instead, I hit up the world of walls, aka Walmart, and scored these for $5.97. They had Toms knock offs for $10, but not in my size (*see, giant) so I went with these instead. Messing up $6 shoes was a little easier on the conscience for me than ruining a nice pair of shoes.

To create all you need is a pair of shoes, acrylic paint, a ruler (and/or tape measurer), pencil, paint brushes, painters tape, markers, and mod podge (spray version- not the kind I have shown in this image).

Because I went with black shoes, I needed to paint the fronts white. If you buy white shoes, obviously you can skip this step. I did 3 coats – as you can see by the shoe on the right, one coat is not enough.

I marked off the shoes with painters tape (all I had was chevron painters tape, but I made it work) so that I’d have a nice clean line between the silver and white. Paint the silver on (I did 2 coats of this). Then I started the fun of drawing. I tried my best to make things as symmetrical as I could and used a ruler for making straight lines.

Then I traced over everything with the appropriate color marker. Using a black marker instead of painting on the lines made this so easy as I’m not always very steady with painting lines.

I also traced and filled in the blue portions with a marker as well. I did go back over it with a dark blue paint afterwards, but having the template already there for what to paint made it a piece of cake.

After you draw on all of your details and paint where necessary (and let everything dry), apply Mod Podge clear acrylic sealer liberally. Seriously, just keep spraying. I did 5 coats of this, and yet I still want to spray it again for good measure.

Once dry, they’re good to go. I was stoked with how they turned out. While this may look hard to make, it’s really not too bad if you have a ruler and a little (or a lot) of patience. It took me a good hour or so drawing and painting on the details, but I think it was well worth it. These are the shoes I’ve been looking for and I’m so happy with them. Now to make a pair for the Nugget.