I saw one I saw one I saw one!!!

I was jumping up and down in the driveway last night-in my robe and jammies…. because YES I did see one.  And if you went outside last night, or the night before, and looked up for a few minutes, you too may have seen one of many meteors that were shooting through the night sky during the annual Perseid Meteor Shower.

Its been a week of galactic news, hasn’t it? The news of the Mars rover was pretty exciting too. I just really *loved* watching all those NASA scientists jumping up & down, hugging, & high five-ing. I wanted to high five them too. Its infectious to watch-has me smiling from ear to ear.

Anyway–was it all this news that inspired my daughter to want to paint Galaxy shoes? I don’t know but she asked me if I would get her some “keds” that she could paint. (at the time I bought white, not knowing that she wanted to do the galaxy shoes-I wasn’t sure what she wanted to paint on them) After I brought them home she explained she wanted galaxy shoes & she showed me some pics on line and we even watched a tutorial. (Having a teenager is the BEST way to stay on top of what is in & what is decidedly not!)

First I picked up the shoes at Target for $12.99. ( buy these in dark blue to save yourself a step!)

Next we gathered our supplies.  I had some fabric paint on hand which we used as the base coat, but you could just use regular craft paint.  I also had some cheesecloth that we used for dabbing and blending.

Next she taped off the rubber edging.  (Word to the wise here….I gave her blue painters tape to use but it just didn’t stick very well. So then I gave her regular old masking tape which worked fine. HOWEVER…after she base coated the shoes I popped them in the dryer for 5 min to set the color, and the adhesive from the tape STUCK to the rubber. SO we had to use Goo B Gone get the sticky off the trim. Don’t do that, ok. It was a giant pain in the patooky.)

Next she just used an old brush to base coat the shoes-don’t forget the tongue!

We let the base coat dry overnight. The next morning (after the dryer debacle) she poured a little purple, bright blue, and pink in a tray.  Using water to thin the colors (very important), she then gently dabbed little blobs of color in various places, being careful to make it look more random, and less planned. She kind of blended and swirled as she went. You can use the cheesecloth here, or a sponge, to feather the edges and soften the blending.  Be careful also to not muddy your colors by OVER blending.

If you are a mom, and your teenage daughter is doing these, I’m just going to tell you one thing: step away from the teenager. Give her some space. The temptation is to monitor the painting, but really its just paint, if it gets messed up, repaint it. no big deal. ENJOY THE PROCESS and don’t over emphasize the results. There. My words of wisdom for today.

She added little highlights of the pink~

And then she added little highlights of silver, plus the stars in white.  She talked about taking them outside and splatter painting them with the white, but she decided to do the stars by hand.( I think the splattering would be cool, but you have to be careful not to get big splotches with that.)

When painting the stars be sure to make some larger and some smaller, some closer together and some further apart. If you do them too uniformly they’ll look like polka dots. (while I love polka dots, that wasn’t what she was going for here)

Ta DA! How cute are these?

I love the way she paired them with the neon orange top too. Very clever girlie.

She’s definitely got the bug to paint more of these now….

Have you seen the galaxy/ nebula trend? What do you think-gonna give it a try?