DIY Cat Shoes: How to Add Heat Transfer Vinyl to Shoes

Make your own adorable DIY cat shoes easily with heat transfer vinyl. It’s easy to personalize your sneakers with this simple DIY technique. This post includes affiliate links, which help to support this blog. Thank you!

Guys. I’m not sure how this happened, but we are already halfway through October. I don’t understand it, but here we are. The good news about all of that is that it is almost Halloween, which is one of my favorite times of the year!

Making my kids’ Halloween costumes every year is one of my very favorite things, even if I don’t always have enough energy left to make a full costume for myself. When I don’t have a full costume I still like to wear something a bit festive to the Halloween parties, school festivals, etc., etc. and that’s where these cute little DIY cat shoes come in.

Last year I had my black cat hat and you’re freaking meow’t shirt, and I thought a little pair of cat sneakers would be a nice touch. I love black cat gear for Halloween because they definitely have that Halloween vibe but can still be worn year round.

It is super simple to make your own personalized sneakers with heat transfer vinyl, and I’m going to walk you through all the steps.

DIY Cat Shoes Supplies:

• Plain Sneakers 
• Black Heat Transfer Vinyl
• Multi-Use Paper or a Piece of Cotton Fabric
• Craft Knife and/or Scissors
• Mini Craft Iron
• Silhouette Cameo or other electronic cutting tool
• Weeding Tool
• My Cat Face Cut Files (Download the svg file for the shoes HERE for the knee patches HERE – Download the Studio3 shoe file HERE and knee patch file HERE)

Psst – If you are new to working with vinyl, check out Vinyl 101 – my beginner’s guide to working with vinyl right HERE.

Step One – Cut

Start by cutting the cat face design out of your heat transfer vinyl. I used my Silhouette Cameo. You could also use another electronic cutting tool if you have it or trace the design with a craft knife.

Step Two – Weed

Use a weeding hook or a straight pin to remove the excess vinyl from your design – all of the negative space.

Step Three – Trim

To fit the design perfectly to the shape of the toe of my sneakers, I positioned it on the toe, and used my craft knife to score through the clear carrier sheet around the edge of the shoe. Then I cut along the score lines with my scissors.

Step Four – Apply to Shoe

Once the vinyl is cut down to match the shoe’s shape, it’s time to apply it!

To apply heat transfer vinyl to any surface, you need heat and pressure, and it can be a little bit tricky to get those when working with a small, flexible canvas shoe.

Instead of using a regular iron, which is a bit large for this project, I went with a mini craft iron, and I totally recommend it. And to be able to apply pressure, I just stuffed the toe of my shoe with crumpled up tissue paper, which gave me a firm surface to press down on. You need heat and pressure on each section of the design for 10-20 seconds.

That little iron can get hot, so I ended up using some heat resistant gloves that we have for the grill to protect my other hand as I held the vinyl design in place. They worked great!

Make sure not to put the iron directly onto the vinyl design because it will melt the vinyl! (Sad face) Cover it with a piece of the multi-use paper or a piece of cotton fabric.

You will know your design has been applied well, when you can see the texture of the fabric through the vinyl, like so:

Repeat the process for the other shoe, and you are all done! So fun, right? I’m thinking all of my sneakers need a little heat transfer vinyl love now. There are so many possibilities!

I used the same design altered just a bit to add some adorable knee patches to a pair of leggings for my daughter. Because the leggings were striped, I did a white layer behind the black layer, and I think they turned out so cute! I also used the expressions vinyl stretch HTV, which works perfectly on stretchy leggings, especially on the knees.

Aren’t they adorable? Now we are officially all ready for Halloween with our black cat gear. 🙂

I hope this post has showed you that vinyl projects don’t have to be intimidating! If you want to learn more tips and techniques for working with vinyl, I have a great new resource! My new Craftsy course, Silhouette Saavy: Venture into Vinyl. It’s an online video course that will teach you everything you need to know to make vinyl projects with your Silhouette. We make everything from large wall decals to t-shirts to an etched mirror, and I walk you through each step.

Click here to check out the new class!

If you make your own DIY cat shoes or black cat leggings, I would love to see them! Share your photos to my facebook page or tag me on instagram or twitter (@persialou), and don’t forget to use the hashtag #persialou for a chance to be featured.

Happy Making!

If you like this post, you might want to check out these:

Black Cat Slouch Hat – Free Crochet Pattern

You’re Freaking Meow’t – DIY Tee

DIY Skeleton Flamingo Tote