The Confident Journal: Dyeing Chanel Leather Shoes...or...How to Give Yourself a Mild Heart Attack, Followed by Lots of Happiness

I don't know if you can tell from my former posts, but I love Chanel. However, since I am not independently wealthy, I like to shop for Chanel on eBay. That is where the shoes below came from. I actually only bought them because they came with two Chanel bags and I wanted to use the bags to protect another pair of Chanel shoes I bought off eBay. Weirdly, it was cheaper to buy the shoes with two bags than to buy the bags themselves off eBay! Anyways, they just happened to be my PERFECT size. . .but not my colors. Enter, Tarrago shoe dye.

I did some research and came across this shoe dye from a company called Tarrago. Since my other Chanel shoes are black, I didn't want to buy black dye. Also, I couldn't commit to a pure color. I wanted green, but shoe dye in general doesn't seem to come in the bold kelly green I'm looking for. Also, the pointedness of the shoes really calls for a more neutral shade. For instance, if I turned them red, they might look a tinge "hooker-y." So, I decided on metallic silver.

All my supplies: The dye kit, the shoes, and some green scouring pads.

The directions and online tutorials said to rub your scouring pads together before using to take the abrasiveness down. I soon learned that Chanel shoes NEED as much abrasiveness as you could get from a scouring pad. If you could find a scouring pad that was just this side of steel wool, that might be a good idea.

I didn't know how strong the primer would be, and I didn't want the logos on the heels of the shoes coming off, so I put a piece of tape backwards over them.

Then, I taped all over the heel where I didn't want primer or dye. I used my fingernail to really tuck the tape into the crannies so the dye job would look somewhat professional.

I found it was easier to use masking tape that had been split when taping around curved areas.

I also taped the sole.

Then, I put a little primer onto a scouring pad and started rubbing. . .and rubbing. . .and rubbing. , .and I really strongly felt that I was getting nowhere. I even tried to use a little nail polish remover and the shoes looked just as shiny and sealed as the day I'm assuming they were new. I'm so serious when I say this: This part of the process took well over an hour. This is the part where I'm between, "Um. . .What have I done?" and, "Have I even done anything?" followed by, "Will the dye even take?" and then, "Will I actually have to throw these gorgeous shoes away?"

and finally, "I may literally hate myself."

You can barely tell, but the shoe on the left is the one I scoured for over an hour. The one on the right hadn't even been touched yet. In the tutorials, the scoured shoe is like...all dull and messy and ready for dying, so you can maybe see why I was having a silent panic attack.

After a few hours of scouring so much my back was starting to hurt, and really getting nowhere with as much dulling as I had heard needed to be done, I decided, "Fine! I'm just going to start painting! I'm sick of scouring and I don't even care anymore!!!"

This is after two layers. It's best to dry the shoes with a hair dryer in between coats of dye.

The directions said to take the included paintbrush and add some paint to the included sponge and apply the paint using the sponge with little circles. The little circles started to create little bubbles in the paint that started drying like little dots, so I nixed the sponge and just used the paintbrush the whole time so the layers would be smooth.

The shoe on the bottom has three layers and the top shoe has four layers. I stopped after four, even though the directions said you could do up to five. I just didn't want it to cake, and I also didn't want it to crack when it dried fully.