Hey all you leather dyers out there!

sarah

After Jonesy's David Bowie shoe post, I was wondering if I could turn my black oxfords into ones that would bookend my hair, since I don't seem to wear black shoes very often any more.

I was inspired by Sveta's yellow/cream oxfords in her last 2 pics.

Would it be possible to turn the black oxfords pictured below into those?

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13 years ago

Dressing

8 replies

Latest reply was from rae

Mellllls

Veteran

i hope you can, those yellow oxfords are amazing!

13 years ago

Sveta

(website)

Veteran

I think Rae and Claire have success with dying dark colors into light - I hope they chime in with an advice.
<I am thrilled there is some love her for my oxfords! Even my 68 year old mom loved them...>

13 years ago

Sarah A

Veteran

I have recently dyed a dark brown coach purse turquoise blue and also a pebble grain leather from brownish red to green. Yes, you could probably get coverage given enough coats. The process is fairly easy to do. The little cuts and scuffs of the dyed finish seem to be more on the coach bag which is more structured, or perhaps it has to do with the porosity of the original leather. You can get the dye and a matching shoe cream in a kit for about $10 so that could help with touch ups, or even retouching with the original dye isn't hard. They likely won't wear quite as hard as if the color was original. You would probably need at least 2 dye kits in each color to ensure coverage is my guess. It took about 7 coats of dye for me to get good coverage.

13 years ago

Jonesy

Veteran

I think it could be done, certainly, though it might be tricky. It would take many, many coats, a lot of patience, and lots of taping off...It would be waaay easier to do a solid color, I think. I wonder about the black sole and heel. Do lighter oxfords usually have a light sole and heel, like natural-colored or brown? Just trying to think if it would seem too stark to have the black sole and a white/pale yellow shoe....

Hopefully Rae and Claire will chime in!

13 years ago

Anonymous

Hi there! Jonesy just mentioned a good point about the sole being black. If the heel is leather covered (like Jonesy's) you can dye that, but the black sole might look funny on a light shoe, so take that into consideration. A black and white (or black and cream) combo would be brilliant, but very high contrast.

Sveta's oxfords look like saddle oxfords, while yours look like they have toe and heel caps. I wouldn't try to copy Sveta's saddle design, I'd just do the color changes where the design of the shoe suggests it.

If you do yellow and white, I'm betting you'd only need one bottle of each. If you keep half of the shoe black and do the other half white or cream, you might only need one bottle of the light colored dye. If you dye the shoes all white or cream, you may need two bottles. That's just a guess.

I order from http://shoeshinekit.com/taseco.html
I think their color chart is the best, so I wanted to support them. I've always ordered two dye kits at once to satisfy their minimum order requirement. I've never ordered the shoe cream.

Good luck!

13 years ago

sarah

Veteran

Thanks for weighing in. Yes, I thought about the soles/heels when I was in the shower this morning, and just ran down to fetch them out of storage, and they are indeed black (darn, I was hoping the soles were brown). So, I think the only option would be to do two-tone with the existing black, and add a cream or off-white contrast, which I suppose would be a whole lot easier anyway. The design is sort of complicated, but I think it would probably work. They would end up being fairly similar then to Angie's and others' two-tone flat oxfords.

Thanks for the link, Claire, that's a site I'd ended up on, so I'll check it out.

13 years ago

Mellllls

Veteran

hm...yours do have a thick sole. i like the idea of a black and white or cream oxford so that the black sole isn't so harsh.

13 years ago

rae

(website)

Veteran

I recently tried to dye black shoes red. If your shoes are very smooth leather, then I would either hold off or look into stripping the leather first. My black shoes were treated to be shiny and smooth (some kind of leather glaze, I think it is), and after two bottles of red, they were still not 100%. The dye works best with softer leathers IMO.

http://onedollarwonders.blogsp.....right.html

13 years ago

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