I am really excited about this project. Besides adding bow clips to shoes this is the first shoe redo I have ever done. I bought this pair of sandals at at garage sale last year for a dollar. They were in good shape and I really liked the style. When I brought them home I realized they were missing a rhinestone. I couldn’t believe I didn’t notice but I completely missed it.
At first I thought I would just buy a new rhinestone and glue it in. That was much easier said than done. I couldn’t find the right color to match. I tried popping out the other rhinestones to change them all but they wouldn’t budge. I ended up throwing the sandals in my shoe refashion pile and gave up on them.
I pulled them out the other day with a renewed outlook. I wanted to make little flowers to cover up the missing rhinestone. My idea didn’t seem like it was going to work and I started wondering if I could remove all of the metal disks. I started pulling them off of the shoes and most of them popped right off. Part way through destroying my shoes I did question my sanity but I figured there was no turning back.
Once I had all the disks pulled off I had a great blank slate to add some fabric flowers. I dug around in my fabric stash and I found this shiny black fabric. It looked like it had to be some kind of synthetic blend so I was hoping it would work to singe the edges. I cut a circle and experimented with a lighter and it singed very nicely.
I proceeded to cut out a series of circles to make a layered singed flower. These are all over blog land right now. I made a prototype first to make sure I had enough layers of fabric to cover up the circles on the shoes. I cut most of the circles with my handy dandy circle cutter. I got it from Amazon to make better circles. You can find it here.
I’m still getting the hang of using it and the fabric was kind of slippery so they aren’t all perfect. You can definitely tell which ones I cut by hand though.
I singed the edges of each circle on the candle. I started out by using my fingers but after I nearly burned myself I wised up and used a pair of needle nose pliers to hold the fabric. If you try this be careful! The fabric gets hot! I found if I ran the flame under the back of the circle, slightly away from the edge, it made the circle curl up into a pretty shape.
I repeated this to make six flowers. Once all the petals were done I glued them together by stacking each layer with a dab of glue in between. To finish off the center I added a pearl bead.
Once the flowers were all done I used my glue gun to glue them all on. I like to glue on top of a magazine so I can rip off the top page that gets covered in glue and throw it away. Then I have a clean page for the next time I want to glue.
Tadah! I fixed my sandals into something I can actually wear. They are a mix between dressy and casual so I can use them in either situation.
I may be linking up to these parties:
