Decorated Pointe Shoes – Halloween Edition

One of my favorite projects that I’ve done are my decorated pointe shoes. They turned out really cool, but I’ve never really done another pair. I’ve started a couple, but never actually got very far. I did dye an actual pair for a costume in Chicago – Hunyak’s circus costume was a silver tutu bit (seen here) and the actress was a ballerina so I dyed her pointe shoes silver.

For some reason I was suddenly compelled to do a Halloween version of decorated pointe shoes. I love Halloween – as you may be able to tell from my multitudinous zombie posts. So I pulled out my RIT dyes and acrylic paints and here’s what I did:

I got a brand new pair of pointe shoes on eBay for cheap (didn’t care about the size so I just went by price). I bent the shank a little to make them look less stiff and I took out the drawstring since it won’t be needed.

When I dye pointe shoes I take a little bit of dye, add water and paint it on like a water color. I try not to do too many coats at one time because the water will soften the resin that is keeping the shape of the box. Above are the colors I used: Black, Pearl Grey, and Navy Blue. I started off with just pearl grey.

Then I added some Navy Blue to the Pearl Grey mix (I just made the connection to Earl Grey – lol). I did a separate batch of Black for some gradation (below). I did several “coats” letting the shoes dry in between.

I also used the Pearl Grey/Navy Blue mix to dye the inside. I may end up replacing the insole with something sturdier, which is what I did on my first pair.

Here’s a close up of some of the gradient black. I think it gives it a very “Halloween” look.

Then, after letting the dye dry completely, I just used some acrylic paint to paint some creepy scenes on the box of the shoe.

The spiderwebs aren’t my favorite. The box is much easier to paint that the softer parts of the shoe.

I need to do more to decorate the back half of the shoe, but I’m not sure what I want to do yet. I don’t want to do scenic work like on the box, so I might go check out the Halloween section at Ben Franklin and see what they have.

I’ll post an update when I’ve done more!!