Shoes, Glorious Shoes

One of the downsides of having RA is that I can no longer wear killer shoes - you know the sort, spiky, high and crippling on the toes!  I have always loved shoes and, in fact, back in the 1980s, when brightly coloured, 4" high stilettoes were first in fashion (yup, wait long enough, as they say!), I had so many pairs, in so many colours and walked, ran and danced in them without so much as a blister!  But now I am reduced to wearing flatties and it is so difficult to get pretty ones, too, when your feet are as naughty as mine.  Still, at least I have enough room in the wardrobe for my current collection!

And where is this leading, you may ask?  Well, this week over at the City Crafter Challenge Blog, the theme is 'Pink, purple and pearls' and there is a most delightful inspiration photograph of the prettiest shoes.  As soon as I saw it, this project sprung to mind:


Papers: Pink Petticoat digital download.  Unfortunately, however, this collection is not longer available but there are some beautiful papers of similar types to choose from.

Template: Craft Stamper magazine online.  Free template: 'Bejewelled' (Grunge Paper shoes).

I fell in love with the grunge paper shoes in Craft Stamper's May 2010 issue.  However, as I have never used and do not own any grunge paper, I wasn't able to sew the two pieces of the shoe together, as the card I was using didn't have sufficient weight or flexibility to allow me to do so successfully.  Therefore, I had to adapt this free template so that the shoes could be made from card, printed with my Pink Petticoat design.  Instead of simply cutting out the shoe upper on the outside line, I scored on this line then cut the shoe upper out with a border of about 1 cm all the way around the outside line, to allow me to create a 'fringe' that I could use to tuck under the sole.  I also had to cut two soles so that I could sandwich the 'fringe' between the two soles to securely attach the upper to the sole and still have a neat finish underneath.  You will find this much easier to understand if you have a look at the template!

The template doesn't have a heel, either, so having constructed the basic shoe, I made a heel out of a scrap of co-ordinating paper. 

Now, unfortunately, this shoe is a bit of a lesson to me in how not to do things in the dark!  Yesterday was so sunny that we were unable to watch the television yesterday evening because of the reflection through the window.  So we closed the curtains and I thought there was still plenty of light for me to work.  There was, but, of course, the quality of the light was different and I'm afraid that my colour matching was all to pot!  So the pink ribbon is not quite the colour I thought it was but, hey, having spent a good while sewing it neatly into place, I was blowed if I was going to remove it and start again once I saw the whole thing in daylight.  Therefore, the pink isn't quite the colour I'd envisaged but you get the idea.

As you can see, I sewed the ribbon in ruffles around the top edge of the shoe then, using a piece of the printed paper as a guide, I cut out a piece of the pattern and coloured it with my Copics to achieve the colour I required (and the pink in the centre is much more the colour I would have preferred the ribbon to be!).  I then attached this embellishment to the front of the shoe and added pearls. 

My OH and I wondered what could be done with this shoe and we came up with the idea of filling it with champagne truffles for a shoe-loving friend.  The nice thing is, you can go completely to town with the decoration if you wish and you can have any colour you like, it just depends on the paper you use. I only chose this colourway because of the challenge - how about a sumptuous aubergine or a deep red flocked paper for starters?!

It's been sunny again today and I actually ventured into the garden to remove some offending weeds.  So it's time for a well-earned rest whilst my darling OH prepares dinner!  What a lucky lady I am.

Happy crafting.
xx