Hartland

You hve to determine if the shoe is leather, or vinyl It may say inside the shoe, it may not. If you see a leather hide mark on the sole, it may mean the sole is leather, but not the shoe. There are Liquid shoe dyes, and Spray kind. the Liquid kind use a daubber, usually a piece of foam rubber on a wire, or a cotton on a wire. If the shoe is vinyl, you have to find a dye that says it is for vinyl You usually brush it on, If the shoe is leather, It is best to remove the original dye from the shoe. The professionals usually use something like Acetone and Steel wool. It can be messy. when the shoe color is gone as much as possible, then you use the liquid dye first. let it dry, and then use the Spray dye. It may be sticky let dry by a fan, or Window with a screen and It will dry over night. Put some Neutral wax polish on to seal the job before wearing the shoes. Practice makes perfect Now you know why they charge the money Good Luck Gene

I belong to the SSIA shoe service institute of America we have a website ssia.info If you need to find a member of our industry, go there and there is a dialog box on the opening page for you to enter your zipcode to see if there is a repairer near to you. (some of them also have websites, and you can visit them also.) Good luck Gene

Some of the information above has been incorrect. I own a shoe repair business for 15 years, have been in the industry for 35 years. Let me explain about high heels. Most ladies high heels are a plastic or wood block, either covered with leather, vinyl, cloth, or painted. The spike kind of heel has a metal tube inside. Some tubes are the length of the heel block, and some only go into about 1/2" of the heel. The shoes from before 70's ( a majority of them) have the long metal spike driven into the plastic block. There is only one size of the metal part, but many sizes of the rubber heel that is molded onto the metal spike. The newer high heel spikes have a metal hollow tube molded into the heel block and there are 5 sizes of metal pins on many different molded rubber sizes. ( Each rubber heel company has their own sizing chart ) That Archenemy site only has metal pin heels with rubber or vinyl heels molded on to them I have only seen all metal heels when someone came into my shop with them on the shoe. They usually say they got them in Europe, but usually they bought the shoes with them. It is not real easy to remove the metal pin. If you twist it too much, it could break off and leave the rest of the metal pin in the heel block. Then you have to devise a way to get the rest of the metal pin out. Some shoe makers use a center punch to push the pin in as far as they can, and then insert the new heel. This may work, but if the old pin is still in the tube, you may not be able to drive the new heel pin into the tube all the way. Thus you will have a heel that is partially sticking out of the heel. One Method that shoe makers use is to use a heel cutter to cut off about a quarter inch of the heel block, so that they can grasp the metal pin and pull it out. We have a heel wheel machine that grasps the pin, and pulls the heel pin out. If you choose the wrong size of heel pin, it either will be too large, and you can't drive it into the heel tube, or it is too small, and it will twist around and around. The heels that you may find in grocery stores, and hardware stores are usually the cheapest that money can buy, so you may not save the money you thought you were. You should find a shoe repair shop that specializes in repairing the high heels and keep them in good repair. If you even wear your shoes or boots with one heel lift missing only one day, you may be inviting disaster. If the metal pin gets driven into the heel block, the shoemaker may have to do one of the methods I mentioned above, and the heels will become lower. You may be lucky the first time, but sometimes if you damage them twice, you may not be as lucky the next time. I know there may be a shortage of shoe repairers, but all it takes is some common sense, and patience, and your experiance will be better Gene