Another Go At A Personal Patina

A little while ago, I had found myself at pub after work, as is a very common thing to do here in England. While I had a good time and can't complain, I noticed that the next morning, it appeared that I had spilled a bit of alcoholic substance on my shoe and it had unfortunately left a lovely stain for me. Now this pair, the 'Dryden' by Allen Edmonds, is my oldest dress shoe, the first one I ever purchased with my own money. So, needless to say I was quite upset because I love the original color of them and did not want to ever change that. But I could not live with having that stain always there yet knew that at least they were not ruined completely, considering the fact that I am now not afraid to dye my shoes with the possibility of consequence.












I had just dyed a pair of my loafers brown (and therefore did not want to do it again), and pretty much have everything else in an oxford with the exception of an all black shoe, so I decided that black would be the ticket. But I wanted to have them slightly unique looking. I thought it would be cool if I could dye the toe blue (some sort of royal or around that shade) and try to fade it to black at the defined cap brogue line. As you can see, I started with the blue on the cap (which ended up being a lot darker than anticipated) and then started using the black for the rest of the shoe, of which I idiotically forgot to take pictures of. It ended up being quite a pain because the black dye that I was using was awful and did not seep into the leather almost whatsoever.  I therefore, built up as much as I could with the black to create a base and then went over the black area with the blue dye (of which was slightly higher quality, getting 'into' the leather). Because of that, I almost ended up with a uniform black shoe. It looked a bit dull so I thought that if I stripped off the toe a bit with some spirit (alcohol), then it would give it some more character. Needless to say, it did so, but not in the way that I was hoping for. It almost became a more aqua blue than any shade of royal.

While I am not disappointed with the turnout, I do wish that I did not spill any beer on my shoe..... :-(