DIY Miu Miu-Inspired Heels For Under A Tenner

Firstly, we need to create a template of the heel of our shoe. To do this, we placed a sheet of A4 paper over the heel, and tracing with our nail, made a mark where we felt the curve and sides of the heel’s outline.

We went over this with a pen, making small dashed along, then joining the lines together.

Repeat this for the second shoe, then cut both templates out, but cut a little bigger than your outline, in case you were too short with your measuring. You can always cut off the bigger edges once you’re sure of the shape.

Pop the templates back around the heel to ensure they’re the right size.

Once you’re happy with the shape, cut out two more templates of your heels, these will be your spares to help you create the jiggered edges.

You’ll notice the heel is made up of two different layers of colour, to create a ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ area, under the shape you’ve just created, draw a 1.5cm border around it.

On your spare paper with the heels shape, trace the bottom zig zag pattern, the border, ie you will cut out the largest piece of faux leather. This piece will be the small trim of your fabric, so choose your colour carefully.

We placed this cut-out template on our silver faux fabric, drew around it, again drawing bigger than we knew we needed, and cut it out.

We did this for both tops of the heels, until we had two silver zig zag pieces.

We then went back to our paper template, and cut around the 12cm zig zag border, so we were left with the piece that would be on the top of our heel.

We placed this cut out on the blue fabric, traced around with a pen leaving room for error, and cut this out.

We laid the blue fabric over our silver fabric for each heel, and placed it upon the heel of the shoe, bending it around to fit.

If you’ve traced your templates well, the fabric should fit, but don’t worry if it’s a little bigger, you can simply mark with your pen areas that you need to remove, and make alterations as you go.

We wanted our two heel patterns to be pretty much the same, but don’t beat yourself up if they aren’t identical, we feel the charming, cool Miu Miu style allows for imperfection!

Once you’re happy with your blue and silver cut outs, place glue on the blue piece of fabric, and glue on top of the silver. Do this while holding the fabric against the heel if possible, as the shape differs when curved.

Glue both pieces of blue and silver together, and set aside.

Use the same method of drawing and tracing for the bottom zig-zag section of the heel, again drawing a jiggered line that fills about 1/4th of the heels shape, adding a border, tracing onto your spare template, cutting out the leather and gluing the two pieces together.

Once you’ve finished this stage you should have four pieces of glued together faux fabric, that will make up the top and bottom of your heel. Well done so far!

Now, for the diamante mesh that makes up that sparkling middle section. Measure the width of your heel, adding 1 cm either side. This will allow for it to curve around the heel.

As you won’t need the diamante to come right to the top of the heel, as the leather will cover it, position it from the bottom of the heel, ensuring it’s straight and centred.

Glue sparingly (this glue is extra strong so you won’t need much) all over the heel and lightly press the mesh down.

As the heel is curved, you won’t get a full strip right up to the mid to top heel, but you can cut down your excess 1cm (the strips of diamante are easy to cut as they’re held together with a light mesh) then add in a single diamante, or however many you need to fill the missing gap.

Do this on both sides of each heel until you are happy with the diamantes finished look. We think it looks super effective, and may even use the spare mesh to cover another of our shoe’s heels that need a revamp!

Starting with the two top sections of leather, glue the backs and position on your heel. Once you’re happy with the placement, press down firmly, curving your hand around the heel for a few seconds.

Glue the bottom sections of leather on in the same way, and when you’re all done, leave the glue to dry for 15 minutes.