MrK1 said:
They look pretty good.
I have dyed a pair of brown ones to black using leather dye.
Never thught of painting them though.
Haha...I did dye them. I just said paint for a larf
UKRob said:
Incredible - I'm also interested in how you did this and the materials.
Ok then, here we go.
Everything I am about to write is from what I learnt/done on this one pair as well as some bits I have read up on.
Materials wise I used Saphir dyes, creams and polishes.
You can also use Fieblings dye but I would not recommend any dye that is too solid (paint like). The Saphir and Fieblings are very runny, go a long way, require several coats and are very forgiving as you can rub out a layer at a time if you mess up.
Okay first thing there is no way you can just put brown on black, it wont work so we need to strip the shoe. Acetone or Deglazer seems to be the weapon of choice but as I had neither I watered down some bleach, got a sponge and away I went for about half an hour.
After this stage I smothered them in leather food in order for the shoe to recover a bit. Although a good shoe leather cream is advisable here I knew I was going to need a lot which would've worked out expensive so I bought a big bottle of leather conditioner intended for sofas. Seemed to do the trick.
Then the base coat. Decided on yellow as a base so I could basically see what I was doing once I started putting the top coats on
Four coats of yellow later.
Again loads of leather food. This also helps to blend a lot of brush marks.
Then time for some green. I "watered" down some with lightening base so colour wasn't solid. I just wanted it so in some lights you could see some glints of it under the brown. Just two coats of this.
LEATHER FOOD, LEATHER FOOD.
Then the brown. Used some medium brown as any darker may have been too solid. A couple of coats again.
LEATHER FOOD, LEATHER FOOD.
Followed this with two lots of dark brown shoe cream and 3/4 lots of brown shoe polish.
Hope this helps.
Its quite satisfying
