Work in Progress - Sno Ball Shoe

Inspired by these great shoe sculpture works of art, I thought about trying something a little more sculptural myself, and landed on the idea of doing a shoe with a Sno Ball where the heel would be. The silhouette would still be shoe-like, but with a little more dimension.

Some links saved from my snoball research:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/snobliz/2734924408/in/photostream
http://nolacycle.blogspot.com/2010/08/snoball-search-mid-month-rides.html
http://www.flickr.com/groups/snobliz/pool/?view=lg
http://www.gonola.com/2010/05/20/sno-balls-new-orleans-other-famous-frozen-treat.html
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cream-of-nectar-sno-ball-recipe/index.html
http://foodio54.com/photos/hansens-sno-bliz-new-orleans-2423303

I did a small Facebook poll of how people envisioned the quintessential Sno-Ball, and a lot of people picture the Plum Street Snoball style Chinese take out container, which I will keep in mind for future iterations (I wanted to go with a cup the first time around). On the subject of what flavor snoball, nectar emerged from the (admittedly somewhat small) pool of answers. Given nectar cream's aesthetic potential and nectar syrup/soda's history in NOLA, it was pretty much a lock.

Started out with a foam sphere from Gary's, trimmed it and glued it onto the heel of a pointed toe, low-heeled mule (I needed the shoe to be backless and approximately the right height). Attached the modified sphere to the shoe with E6000.

I glittered the snowball sphere in MS glitter, color "cotton candy" (tip: foam brush = very helpful for getting a good coat of glue and glitter on Styrofoam) and did the interior of the shoe in Recollections color "champagne" and the shoe itself in Recollections color "raspberry."

I cut down a plastic Mardi Gras cup to be the right size (I had to but off the cuff around the top and re-glue it onto the shorter cup base). I got the first couple of layers of glitter on the cup before attaching it, because that seemed easiest (I can still do touch ups, and of course transfer the logo onto the cup). Cup-wise, I didn't want a solid white cup (it seemed a little plain) and since I so love riffing on classic NOLA logos, I decided to go with a modified Hansen's cup (reference image 1, reference image 2)

Some pics of the shoe-in-progress; it's nowhere near finished, but the cup's been glued to the shoe, so the shape's mostly there:

I'm working on the logo separately, and will transfer when done. The picture below more or less encapsulates how I do re-worked logos:
- First I print out a nice big clear reference image (top left)
- Next I trace the salient features of the logo (trying whenever possible to remove tiny features/details that are going to be tough to recreate in glitter) and I change relevant aspects of the logo as I trace (here, "HANSEN'S" becomes "MUSES," "SNO-BLIZ" becomes "SHOE-BLIZ" and the little red headed fellow on the side (assuming I can keep him in the final version) is holding a little Muses shoe instead of a Sno-bliz (top right)
-I photocopy the logo to reduce it to the size I'm aiming for, and tape it inside a ziploc bag (preferably a freezer bag because the plastic is thicker) and trace with 3D fabric paint followed up with glitter, one color at a time (bottom):

I'll do the teal lettering in the same blue as the cup and the Sno-Bliz itself and the red hair in the same Recollections color "raspberry" as I used on the the shoe (the white of the cup will probably be MS in color "crystal"). The details are pretty fine on this one, so I'm going to have to see how much I can do for the shoe. May rework it as needed; specifically I'm considering a version of this style of sno-bliz cup or a version of the above logo that doesn't have the grinning little red-head (though of course that would be sad).

Before and After pictures:

Left = working out the shape of the cup and sno-ball on the shoe's heel, pre-glittering and gluing the pieces together. Right = the glittered cup and sno-ball (minus the spoon, which will get attached last)