Although sneakers are not as glamorous as heels, wedges, or knee high boots, they are the most comfortable shoes to wear. My enthusiasm to wear heels usually evaporates after a short and painful night out and I quickly go back to my good old sneakers. Since I spend most of my time in sneakers, I was very happy to find an interesting blog post with do-it-yourself ideas for DIY sneakers decoration. I decided to give one of their suggestions a try – gluing lace to sneakers.
My cheap sneakers were the perfect Guinea pig, since I have been wearing them for over a year now and started getting tired of their plain look. I also used some lace and appliques:
I started by choosing a design I liked, using both black and white lace, as well as some lace butterfly appliques. To get lace strips that are identical in length and width, I folded the lace several times before cutting the edges of the folded piece. I used pins to hold the folded lace together. This is an easy way to get identical strips of fabric.
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Once I had my lace ready, I tried using regular “Scotch” superglue to glue the lace to the sneakers. However, I immediately noticed three issues with the glue:
- The glue soaked in the fabric of the sneakers, so I had to use a lot of it to be able to glue the lace
- The chemicals in the glue almost melted the lace
- After the glue dried, its color changed from transparent to white
Since any of these three things will make DIY sneakers decoration impossible, I decided to sew the lace instead of gluing it. These issues might be the result of the particular type of glue I used. If you decide to use glue, make sure that you use a glue suitable for fabric.
If you decide to sew the decorations instead, use a thread that matches the color of the lace or appliques. Sewing inside the sneakers can be a bit tricky, depending on the model of sneakers you are working with and on the location of your decorations. However, after only half an hour, I completed my DIY sneakers decoration project.
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I also tried sewing some appliques on the soft fabric boots that flood the stores every winter. I sewed four red flower appliques on the side of each boot. It was really easy to sew through the fabric and the boots looked a lot more interesting and more expensive afterwards. Check out this blog post for my fabric boots decoration experiment.
[…] we shared with you some ideas on decorating sneakers with lace. Today we are going to complement them with an easy DIY for jeans – adding lace to the […]