Dyed Canvas Shoes

Please tell me I’m not the only one who “experiments” with new techniques or projects when there’s a deadline!  

I needed shoes for the girls to wear to the wedding, and missed out on all the sandal sales.  It was too late in the season and stores were mostly out, and I didn’t want to deal with online shopping.  I found clearanced white canvas shoes at Walmart and snagged them up (got the last size left for Emily)   I also purchased a bottle of black Rit dye.  I was hoping to find gray, but they didn’t have any.

And then the experiment.  Sure, I’d seen pictures of dyed shoes before, but I was just hoping I could use the black to get a gray color.  I lucked out!  But not after a couple of scary moments.

I used a bucket in my bathtub to do the dying.  I poured in some hot water and some of the dye and dropped the shoelaces in.  I figured they’d be easy to replace if something disastrous happened.  After about 15 minutes they looked pretty gray so I pulled them out, rinsed them, and they turned into a light lavender color.  Hmm, not what I was going for.  I poured in a little more dye and added the shoes.  They soaked the color up really well and were only in the dye for about 2 minutes before I pulled them out.  I rinsed them, and they looked great!  It took lots of running water to rinse them out, but when they didn’t seem to be losing any more color I set them outside to dry (after squeezing as much out as I could with paper towels)

I put the laces back in and left them for nearly an hour.  They picked up a little more color, but not as much as the shoes.  They looked great though, and totally worked with the outfits! 

(Want to see how I made the skirts?  Go here)

Have you dyed shoes before?  How’d they turn out?