Floral and Arty - How to DIY Valentino Floral Combat Boots

This year's famous floral trend has a winter garden aesthetic to boot!

You will need...

NB: For a scraper tool, I used a narrow wood carving knife but it doesn't have to be that specialised - a blunt scalpel will do.

Difficulty

Quite easy

It was fiddly in places but, while there was more to the process than first expected, I don't remember struggling with any of it. However, it does help to have a pretty steady hand!

Time

About 6-7 hours (I say that - a fair bit of mine was trial and error so it may not be as long as that).

Total cost

I used half a skin of leather I already had lying around so that would have been £10. The boots were £24.99 from H&M. I was actually lazy with sourcing - you can get combat boots for as little as £10 on eBay, or be even luckier with charity shops. Incidentally, I'd also recommend charity shops as a good place to get real leather; you can get good deals on bags and clothes, which you can then dissect. Either way, I digress - basically, I spent one respectable heck of a lot less than £995, which the original would set you back!

Just add flowers!

Cut out four of each of the following pieces in a similar size - the most relevant ones being 4 flowers measuring 8cm in diameter and 16 flowers which are 5cm wide. These are our bases, while the ones near the top will give different 3D textures.

If you're lucky enough to own a working printer, you might want to print out the above image as a template, which I think is about A3 size - apologies for my laughably poor maths if it isn't (God only knows how I got that A* at GCSE!).

Once you've cut all your pieces out, match the corresponding layers from the template and staple them together to make flowers. Then, get slightly overexcited when you see what your new masterpiece is starting to grow into with the 3D leather flowers perfected.

If you want to distress your flowers like those on the original, experiment by boiling them in water (yes, really) and tapping them with your hammer to smooth and soften the edges - not too hard, though. or you'll rip through them. You can also use your scraping tool to get some subtle textured finishes. If either of these parts scare you, you'll be pleased to know they're optional. You can also do as much or as little as you want so if you'd only like to do a few flowers, that's up to you.

Use your scalpel to pierce holes in your flowers and boots and secure them in place with split pins. You might also want to use the scalpel to prise out the remaining staples. Don't use staples to attach your flowers - I did, initially, and it didn't work! You may notice that I tinted the split pins black with some nail polish in the middle,for the sake of consistency.