Graduation Shoes

I was thinking today that it's been a year since I graduated with my Master's Degree.  You know, a lot of people paint their mortarboards or bedazzle them or put cute sayings on them (and I did that when I got my undergrad degree, so I wanted to do something different...).  So, I thought about how I've always wanted shoes with the painted soles (a la Louboutins -- let's be honest, who doesn't lust after those shoes?) and I sort of ran with the idea.  Since I was graduating from Clemson, I figured the perfect thing was to have white shoes and paint the soles orange and purple.

So these are the shoes I bought:

The soles were originally brown, but I painted them a base coat of white.

I figured it would be fun to have the tiger paw on the soles of the shoes and it would be easier to paint the soles white and put a template down and paint over it.

Two coats later, the orange shoe is done!

So I started on the purple shoe.

It was a little splotchy after the first coat...

...so I put a second coat to even it out.  It looks really dark, but I promise it's purple!

After I got them painted, I figured they could use a little more pizzazz, if you know what I mean.  I put purple rhinestones on the orange shoes and orange rhinestones on the purple shoes to outline the tiger paw and make it stand out more.

Voila!

Obviously I could only wear them once before all the rhinestones came off, but I really only painted them for  graduation anyway so I don't feel too bad the rhinestones came off.  So, yeah.  Enjoy the shoes!  I still wear them when I need cute white shoes (and I got them on sale for about $10, so I don't mind that they're painted and the rhinestones fall off...).