Make your own boney shoes fit for a Grim Reaper on holiday

My house is one stone sarcophagus from becoming a crypt, thanks to the piles of skeletons, bones, skulls, and various asunder bits and pieces that could be turned into bones given the right time.

So of course I figured I needed to add more to my bone collection with boney shoes:

Here's how I made them…

Supplies:

Process:

I haunted (get it?) around looking for a pair of white canvas shoes to have the cleanest palette to begin. Then came the long, dull sketching anatomy lesson when you question your sanity as you're trying to doodle on the tongue of a shoe.

I lined the pencil in Sharpie ink, which can occasionally be a problem if you use real Sharpie, but this was the pen version. Those things are awesome.

I decided to paint the outside of the lines first because I cannot be trusted with black — it goes everywhere. Note the lovely floral pattern inside the shoe… death feels so pretty.

The toe bones, while time consuming, were not too difficult to paint. I used about four shades, a deep brown to highlight the bone lines, a redder brown give depth around the edges, then a honey nut brown on top of the red brown, and finally globs and globs of a not-quite-white swirling, on occasion, with the other browns. All to get the illusion of boney bones.

Once I was happy with my bone painting, I hosed the entire thing down with my thick clear acrylic coating. A few times. This should help with any peeling/cracking, but these aren't all-weather or terrain shoes.

I debated for a while whether I wanted to try the task of painting the soles. Eventually I decided to throw caution to the wind, and have a go. For that I used the plastic fusion spray paint, because that shit makes the world go 'round.

The final step was to lace the shoes, very carefully, and tada: