Gray shoes that made me blue

Shoes can be pretty splendid.

There are oh so many things to love about shoes.  So many.

Of course there are those astonishingly [please insert the descriptive word of your choice here] shoes that house an arachnid the size of a dinner plate in the platform.  Yes. Yes, for real and true, someone has done that.

Arachnids are spiders.  I just wanted to make sure you knew that.  Does that make you want to go back and insert a different descriptive word into that sentence?  Hmm?

[I’m opening my eyes widely–raising my eyebrows–and tilting my head ever-so-slightly to the right.]
I’m not talking ‘Spidey Sense’ shoes, either. 

[Not kidding. Here’s the photo.  And no I can’t post it here.  I about fell off of my chair when the picture popped up on the screen as I googled it.  I use one of those exercise balance balls for my computer chair.  It becomes startlingly unbalanced when you’re trying to escape a malicious predator.  I’ll take a whack upside my head any day over a spider.  In a photograph, on a pillow, on a log, in a web, over the river and through the woods. Doesn’t matter.  Whack away.]

Back to the splendidness of shoes.

I purchased a pair of gray shoes online–for a fabulous price.   So cute.

The ruffle on the toe was a huge selling point for me. 

That’s a picture of the right shoe. It’s perfect.

~sigh~ 

I grabbed a seam ripper so fast it would make your head spin when I noticed that the ruffle on the left shoe looked less like a ruffle and more like a smashed, ick something or other.  And, oh yes, I tried to manipulate that little puppy into some semblance of looking like the other one–but it wouldn’t move.

[And by ‘puppy’ you know I mean ruffle, right?]

Shipping them back would have been economically unsound.

Or dumb. 

I unpicked that smashed, ick ruffle off of the left shoe before even thinking to take a picture.  Aaaand before thinking about what on earth I was going to do to remedy the situation. 

The shoes have been sitting in a box on the floor of the superbly unorganized crafting room for over a year.  I don’t know what I expected I would do with one perfectly ruffled shoe and one perfectly unadorned shoe.

I rather unceremoniously unpicked the other ruffle off.

And then I had an idea.  How about figure out a way to put any bow, flower, or whatever I wanted on the shoe?  Ta-da!  I just didn’t even want to wait to show you.

Materials:

–black grosgrain ribbon (it was the most neutral color I had at the moment)
–glue (any kind that has staying power)

[Gorilla glue is not going to be a good option.  Or plumber’s glue.  Those were Handsome Dude’s suggestions.  I love that he was even interested–but don’t use those glues.]

–a needle
–black thread

Here’s how to put it together:

–don’t worry about the glue residue from the original ruffle–it will eventually be hidden

–make sure that all of the cut threads are pulled out of the shoe (from unpicking the ruffle)

–cut a piece of grosgrain ribbon to wrap through and around twice

–fold over 1/2″-3/4″ on each end of the ribbon and glue it

[It keeps the ribbon from fraying and fortifies it. Not like a vitamin–it just gives the ribbon some added strength. The glue I used didn’t make the ribbon stiff, which was a bonus.]

Warning:  If looking at a picture that is out of focus causes you to lament–don’t look at the next photo.

I have other gifts.  ~grin~

The “X” part shouldn’t be glued because that’s where you’ll slide the clips with your bows or flowers or brooches through.

The part that I’m holding in the photo?  That’s the part I glued and laid on the very top (where the X is).  I wanted to make sure that most of the ribbon was NOT glued to the shoe on the top. I used clips to hold it in place until the glue completely dried.

This is a pic of the bow backs–showing the clips.

They are simple felt bows.  I have several pairs of them.  They are great for a lot of reasons.  Maybe I’ll blog about it one of these days.  Hmm.

After they dried, I decided to reinforce one of the ribbons by stitching around the edges. 
I’m going to live life on the edge and leave the other side alone–just to see if the glue will hold.

Here are the shoes with one set of cute clipped on.  I did some boogying to see if they would fall off.  They didn’t.

Here are the shoes with another set of cute.

So many options.

I love it when things turn out.

ShA-BoOm.

Enjoy the day.