Shaving Foam Shoes

When I stumbled across videos of people using shaving foam to apply dye, at first I thought surely not. After researching into it, I discovered it is a highly popular technique, especially for shoes and hats. So far I have only dyed hats using ice, I will follow up with a 'Shaving Foam Hats' post when I get round to trying it out. For now let's dive into my first tie dye shaving foam experience.

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I've been dying to have a go at this technique. So when I was given a pair of pumps and asked to jazz them up for a wedding I was over the moon. I was given a photo of the outfit and set out to find a suitable colour. The skirt was a nice shade of green, I chose New Emerald Green (dharma procion dye) and stuck with just the one shade to keep it nice and subtle. I used Gillette foaming shaving cream, just one can and that was plenty as there was a lot left in the pan. The shaving foam only cost me £1 and I could have got more than one project out of this can but being my first time I didn't want to have to top it up halfway through so I emptied the can into a roasting dish, deep enough that the shoes could be submerged. I made the pattern by blobbing the liquid dye down in rows and then swirling the dye around in rows with a toothpick, merging the blobs into a marble effect.

The soda ash soaked shoes had been masking taped around the sole and the shoe laces removed, ready to be dyed.

I dipped them into the dish top first so that the tongue of the shoe got good coverage, then each side one at a time. I repeated with both shoes and then threw the shoe laces in the remainder of the foam.

At this point it was impossible to see if it was going well or not, you can't see beyond the foamy mess so it is a matter of trusting the process. I left them to sit for 24 hours and returned the next day to wash them out and see the results. The shaving foam had mostly 'melted' and I was met with a lovely marbled effect underneath.

Initially during the wash out I was worried the shaving foam had diluted the colour too much as they looked very blue. When they dried the green really came out and my aim to create a nice subtle effect was achieved.