Last month, it was my birthday.  At the time I was sick of theme parties in an all-new-all-angry kind of way, so I decided the “theme” of my birthday party would be “dress up real nice”. Basically, I asked all my guests just to wear whatever made them feel super fancy and nice and amazing.

I spent quite some time thinking about what to wear to this shindig, and then one blessed day it came to me – glitter shoes. Really, really glittery shoes.

However, I am a serious lady on the day-to-day so I knew that these also needed to be cheap glitter shoes. That immediately ruled out 99.99999999999999999999999% of the Internet (also, I am lazy and couldn’t be bothered searching any further after I realised that the glittery Christian Louboutin’s were a touch out of my price range). This left me with only one option:

D

I

Y

To know me is to know my inability to do anything with finesse. I cannot count how many times I have hot-glued my own hand. The other week I made a cushion cover which was AMAZING except that the zip is funked up. Most of my DIY attempts look okay until you turn them over and see the unholy mess I made. This couldn’t really happen with glitter shoes as they would be clearly visible from many angles during the evening.

You might think I would have done tonnes of research then. Nah. This is what I did:

I bought glitter (three colours VERY IMPORTANT), good old PVA glue, and cheap-ass shoes from The Warehouse for 50% off. They weren’t as high as I wanted them to be but this was probs for the best. I already had newspaper, various bowls, and a paintbrush.

Yes, that is gold wrapping paper. I didn’t have any old newspaper and I am awesome like that.

I mixed the THREE glitters together in a plastic cup, thusly:

Then I poured the glue into a bowl, got the glitter back into its convenient sprinkle containers, and got amongst it. Basically, I brushed some of the glue on, then sprinkled that area generously with the glitter mix. Observe:

Yeah, I got glitter all over the joint. It is still all through my flat and the place has been vacuumed several times. Try not to be so…flamboyant…with the glitter, okay?

I would then kinda shake the shoe and the excess glitter fell off. Perfect.

Eventually, the shoes looked like this:

Which I feel is pretty good for shoes that cost $25ish. They also held up well (some mild areas of wear) which is great considering I ran around in these holding various cocktails for many hours. However, I didn’t go dancing in them, which might have been another issue.

If you want to make these, I suggest the following:

• really look at where the glue is going. You can always wipe off extra glue and glitter, but make sure you get right to the edges on the first go as this is much easier than going back to do the fiddly bits;
• seriously, use various similar shades of glitter. This created a cool effect. I think red, pink and gold might also look good together;
• you can buy sealant sprays to lock the glitter on, but if you’re just doing it for one night, probably save the money and buy a drink instead.