Painted Devonshires...i.e., tax procrastination!

Alright, I am mostly done with my taxes, but as always happens with something boring, I started itching to do a quick project that wouldn't take as long as the new en fourreau I've been planning. With Angelus leather paints from Dharma, I had previously painted my American Duchess Devonshires a pretty sort of maize-yellow (ok it was a little more mustardy than anticipated).

 So pretty, but I'm always tweaking...

But ever since I saw Caroline's ridiculously gorgeous painted silk shoes, I have been dreaming about doing a little bit more to my yellow Devvies. So I was flipping through What Clothes Reveal by Linda Baumgarten and spied an adorable pair (page 19) of yellow (possibly more ivory, it's hard to tell because it depends on the lighting in the pictures) brocaded silk with blue trim, and fell in love!

 Sorry, terrible scan of the photo from the book but you get the idea

Much better photo cropped from this one at CW's website

Previously, the shoes had been coated with the Angelus leather finish because they were ready to be worn, so when I made up my mind to re-paint, I took the leather preparer/deglazer to them, which is fascinating stuff -- technically you could take off every coat of paint on the shoes and get right back down to the white leather every time you felt like having a totally different pair! 

I managed with just a few of the Angelus colors: white, yellow, champagne and sapphire, mixing to get the shades I wanted, and spent the last two nights painting away while watching the first season of Game of Thrones.

Not gonna lie...they spent last night beside my bed so I could see them when I woke up, haha. Are they exact copies of the brocade CW shoes? Nope! I couldn't see every angle in the photos and had to guess at a lot, and took rather a lot of artistic license with the flowers because really, plants are NOT my forte (I mostly paint medieval illuminations).  Also, the shine of the leather will always give the shoes away as not being fabric, but I am thinking about getting the matte leather finish (I had satin finish before) to see if it will cut back on the shine a bit.  Unfortunately, these shoes are WAY too fancy to go with any of my current gowns...guess I'll have to make a new one! Drat ;)