I know a few of you have already done this, but I have seen even more questions about how to do it over the last couple of months. So I thought I'd attempt a step-by-step guide. It worked for a previous pair I did for a friend. These shoes are for another friend, they aren't finished, but you'll get the idea!
You will need, tweezers, Gem-Tac glue or E6000 glue, non-hotfix flat back crystals. I have used resin ones from eBay (about £25 worth for both shoes, I can post the link if people would like it), if you're feeling flush you can use swarovski but they will set you back more than £100 to cover an entire shoe.
I have used three crystal sizes, 2mm, 3mm and 4mm (ss6, ss10 and ss16).
Step one:
Out line the area to be crystalised in the smallest of your crystals for a small area, or alternating one small followed by one medium gem for a larger area like the sides of the shoe. Squeeze a blob of glue onto a piece of scrap paper/card, and use your tweezers to dip the back of the crystal in the glue, the press onto the shoe.
Step 2:
Using the largest of your crystals, make a random polka dot pattern
Step 3:
Using the middle sized crystals, make a polka dot pattern in between the large crystals already on the shoe
Step 4:
Use your smallest crystals to fill in between all the other crystals
And ta da! A sparkly shoe:
I only did the toe tonight whilst watching rubbish TV (about an hour or so), I'll update when I've finished the rest of the shoe! I think it will take another 3 or 4 evenings though...
For the sides of the shoe, I outlined like above, then filled in from one corner working my way across the length of the shoe. I tried to use even amount of each size for a random effect. Here is the fully gemmed and now being pearled shoe:
