Rainbow Rhinestone Converse

Hi friends!
I have a beautiful project to share with you today! 
Jeanne's Wedding shoes!

My big sister got married last weekend at a lovely winery in Prosser, WA . She special requested a pair of custom embellished red Converse sparkle shoes for the wedding. 

I started at the beginning of March. I headed straight to Pinterest to get ideas for how to make these shoes as fancy as possible. I knew I had a lot of work to do before her wedding in May and not a lot of time in which to do it so I started with sketches before getting to work.

I knew I wanted a rainbow motif for the main body of the shoe, a silver border around the outside edges and silver detailing on the heel and toe of the shoes. I started with the silver work. This was my first time using a HotFix gems and a heat tool to affix stones, it was very slow moving.

The Hot Fix gems state that they can be used on a variety of surfaces. Unfortunately shoe rubber should not be on that list. By the time I got to the end of this shoe project all the rhinestones affixed to the rubber portions of the shoe were falling off. I had to remove them with tools and re-apply them with Gorilla Glue in the eleventh hour. It was a pain!

Next up, I started the rainbow portion. My original plan was to keep the colored stripes solid but I realized I wasn't going to have enough colored rhinestones to do so. I sprinkled in lots of silver and clear stones to add more visual interest and take up space. 

Each of the four side panels of colorwork took about 25 hours to complete. Working for 4 hours a day for every day of April I was able to finished one shoe panel per week. I purchased a small work desk from Amazon to make the detail work a little less back breaking. 

Once I finished all the rhinestone work I purchased a beautiful set of satin laces from DyedDesignsbyMJ on Etsy. 

Once completed, I used a hard brush to knock off any jewels that might be loose and took the shoes out for a final photo shoot. It was around this point when the silver edging gems on the rubber portion of the shoe started to fall off. I took a week off from shoe work to come to terms with this tragedy then carefully chipped all the edging stones off and reapplied them with Gorilla Glue. 

As the shoes age the HotFix glue from the back of the rhinestones seems to be oxidizing. The older they get, the more the rhinestones are losing their shine due to the drying out and whitening of the backing glue. They are also starting to fall from the fabric portion as the glue becomes more brittle.

My advice to you, if you attempt to take on a project like this, do not use HotFix gems. I don't know if I would use Gorilla Glue either, while it does a good job of holding the gems onto the shoes it does alter their clarity and makes them appear fuzzy. 

I always want my projects to stand the test of time, unfortunately this will not be one of those projects. While I did have dreams of these beauties ending up in a museum somewhere, I am coming to terms with the fact that not all art is permanent and these were exactly what they needed to be when they were needed and that is enough. 

These shoes were certainly a labor of love and though I was not able to attend the wedding myself, I hope wearing them was like having a tiny bit of Ashley there with her on that magical day.

While I am very proud of how these turned out, I don't see myself making more sparkle shoes in the future. I do have enough rhinestones left for another epic project, what should it be? 

Would you wear rhinestone Converse? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Thanks for reading!
-Ashley