Purple and white Zebra print shoes DIY!

The inspiration for this came from Pinterest, where I feel like 90% of my inspiration as of late has come from!

A friend tagged this fantastic pair of zebra shoes and I knew that it was a DIY waiting to happen.

First, I had these horrendous white pumps in my closet, I know, I know, why? If for some reason you don't have a shoe travesty of this nature lurking in the back of your closet I bet you can get them REAL cheap at a thrift store:

Step 1: I took painters tape and ripped it. I think that this is key. Most zebra print shoes are on dyed on to calfskin or a similar (albeit synthetic) material to make them look more like "hide". This cuts back on the super clean lines that could make zebra look like striped, which is not what you want. Painters tape (it turns out) tears in a really great asymmetrical way giving exactly the right look. I did NOT push down on my tape too hard on purpose, I wanted some random bleeding to soften the edges and give more of a water color look to the shoes. If this is not your style, then push hard on the tape to make sure it gives you a clean line.

Here is the taped off shoe:

Next I used acrylic paint (I prefer Martha Stewart's all purpose acrylic in this case I used the Pearl finish for a little shimmer), and painted two coats on the shoe. I would have gone with black for a more traditional look except I don't wear a lot of black, I wear a lot of grey, brown, green etc. Believe it or not I will get more wear from a purple shoe.

I only let the second coat dry for 15 minutes before removing the tape because I didn't want to fight the "dry-paint-clinging-to-tape" battle.

And Voila!

They aren't perfect, but I like them that way. Truly, if the water color trend wasn't in I might have done a touch up to sharpen them but I like the softer lines personally.

Outfit post coming Tuesday! I'm wearing these bad boys to WORK!