Rose Shoe

This shoe was inspired by the Prada flower heel, and to a slightly lesser degree this pair. I thought the heel-as-a-stem idea was really clever, and wanted to do a rose-themed Muses shoe with a stem heel.

I used the mate of shoe that became the purple, green and gold sandal because it had the right shape (a relatively thin heel, a back section separated from the rest of the shoe, etc). We had bought a clearance pack of four silk roses (though you could also probably do this with other silk flowers or those big boxes of silk rose petals you can find in the wedding sections of craft stores), so I disassembled three and saved one to put on the front of the shoe. I coated the back section of the shoe with Recollections in "raspberry"  in case any shoe showed through, then starting with the smallest petals on the top edge of the shoe and increasing the petal size as I worked back down towards where the heel met the shoe, I glued on petals in rows with E6000.

Once the petals were in place, I covered the heel in green glitter to be the stem (using the ArtMinds fine green glitter that has a little gold in it) and glittered six fake leaves from another bundle of fake flowers. I would like to note that fake flowers are forever going on sale at Michael's to make room for the new season...right now the spring stuff is 70% off and the place is full of autumn stock. If you're planning Muses shoes year round you can slowly acquire lots of good fake floral stuff to work with.

Anyways, once the green leaves and stem were dry, I arranged five of the leaves around the base of the flower (the sepel for all the botony buffs) and one lower down on the stem. I brushed the leaves with mod podge (not coating them entirely, just a little here and there) and added pink glitter.

 Here's the back of the shoe, showing the "stem," leaves and exterior of the rose (before I added the sequin trim)

I wanted the rose theme to go from very literal to more stylized from back to front. I did the interior of the shoe in Recollections "gold" and the front three stripes of the sandal in ArtMinds green, ArtMinds hot pink and Recollections "raspberry." The two brands have slightly different shades of hot pink, which I liked.

I added gold sequin trim between the stripes on the front of the shoe (just like the purple, green and gold sandal) and hot pink sequin trim from that giant Jefferson Variety roll along the bottom edge. I don't show it in any of these pictures, but I did the sole of the shoe a nice earthy brown glitter (Recollections "espresso"). I glued a rose to the front of the shoe, and replaced the center with a yellow rhinestone and some gold glitter.

The finished shoe, top view

The finished shoe, side view

Of course, it still needs lettering (I'm planning MUSES down the center). I'm definitely going to try some more variations on this technique with some other flowers I have in the stash.