Of course for me the work window is a little narrower: my due date is about a month and change away. So onwards with the glittering!!
The Lucky Dog Shoe is now on wheels!!
The front wheels are wooden craft wheels from Michael's (these, or something quite close/) and the back wheels are from a Pine Car derby kit glittered in Martha Stewart "onyx" with white paint and glitter on the front wheels. These don't roll freely (the axels are glued to the bottom of the shoe), but I'm thinking about re-doing them so the shoe can roll. Too far? Possibly.
And here's a collection of shoes that are all approx. 80-90% finished (glittering and finishing is more or less done, still need "Muses" and "2015" written on them and some extra touch-ups/detailing). As a bonus, none of these are food-related so I can feel a little less silly about my theme choices this year.
This one I call the Mermaid Treasure shoe:
The teal on the exterior of the shoe is Recollections "Paradise. "Recollections makes two teals: "Paradise" and "Peacock." I love both, but "Peacock" is a little bluer and "Paradise" is a little greener. The interior (which you can't really see) is Recollections "Champagne" and the sole and heel are ArtMinds stackable purple. I was going for a teal and purple color scheme to invoke the aesthetic of the Sirens of New Orleans (it's also a slightly darker-hued/more jewel-toned version of The Little Mermaid's color scheme). Edges were lined with a gold braid, which while not glittery I thought might give the shoe a more nautical vibe than sequin trim would've. My mermaid shoe research is on this Pinterest board: Mermaids and Sirens.
For a while now, I've been bookmarking art shoes where the interior of the shoe is sort of used as a vase and completely filled up, often with flowers and often as (I'm assuming) a centerpiece. If you're curious about examples of what I'm talking about, see this Halloween centerpiece, this flower and feather filled hot-pink shoe or this sort of Victorian-esque piece
I wanted to completely fill the shoe like an overflowing treasure chest. To keep the weight down, I filled the shoe interior with a base layer of little purple glittery foam balls (I wasn't sure how much they're show in the finished so, and the answer is they don't really), then layers shells on top. I had a pretty decent collection of shells, both personally gathered and store-bought, so I mixed in a couple different types and hot glued them into place. I also added a few pearls (from a strand of beads) and some sprigs of glittery "seaweed" which I bought when Michael's Christmas stuff went on sale last year (they have a really wide range of floral decor at Christmas time so it's entirely possible to pick things up that can be repurposed into something not particularly Christmassy).
So, she's done except for lettering, and maybe a little more embellishment.
Here's another shoe in the category of me experimenting with filling up the entire entire of the shoe, which I call The Golden Goddess Shoe:
As described above for the glittery seaweed, I picked up some glittery gold branches in the Michael's post-holiday clearance that I thought didn't look too Christmassy and might be repurposed. I thought on a monochromatic shoe the effect might be more mythological.
The shoe is glittered in several different shades of gold: Martha Stewart on the exterior, ArtMinds on the heel and sole and Recollections on the interior.The edges are lined with gold sequin along the bottom and a wider looser almost lace like gold trim I had in the stash on the upper edge and open toe edge. Then the shoe is filled with different shades of golden leaves, vines, branches, fruit and berries (all of which was Christmas clearance). I'm going for a Greek myth vibe, some kind of hybrid of the King Midas myth and the Golden Apple from The Judgement of Paris. Still needs "Muses" and "2015," which I'll probably do in that angular Greek font.
Here I was really playing with layering sheers to see what kind of effects I could get. I was also experimenting with the Recollections tinsel glitter, which I hadn't ever tried on a shoe before. Jazz Fest made me a little braver with texture this year - I don't usually stray from ultra-fine glitter because I haven't really had great experiences with the super cheap chunky stuff in the past, but I think that made be an issue with the low quality of the chunky glitters I was using: there was some really cool use of textured glitters at the Muses demo at Jazz Fest.
The exterior is several coats of Recollections tinsel glitter in "Frost." The base shoe was a pale taupe and I thought I could get away ignoring my own advice on translucent/pale glitter and just skip priming with white spray paint. I WAS WRONG. It took twice as many coats to get an effect I was happy with. The interior and heel are Recollections "peacock" covered with the much more sheer, iridescent Martha Stewart "blueberry slush." The sole (which doesn't really show in the pictures) is Recollections "bling" (a mirrored iridescent silver) covered with Jefferson Variety iridescent white glitter. The layering gives a nice icy effect.
The trim around the top edge is a white sequin trim that I thought looked nice and snowy and the bottom edge is teal sequin trim. I made a teeny little snowman for the shoe out of two small glittery white foam balls with sticks for arms (glittered with Martha Stewart "brownstone"), a toothpick piece for the carrot nose (glittered with Martha Stewart "copper") and little black glitter facial features drawn on with Scribbles puff paint and glittered in Martha Stewart "onyx."
Still needs lettering, and I'm trying to decide what else this shoe might need...
Hope everyone's glittering/planning/dreaming of shoes is going swimmingly! I can't wait to see what people share for 2015 (though I really a lot of that sharing probably won't happen until later in the year/closer to Mardi Gras...*sigh*)
Next post will be about Snoball shoes, including some how-to tips, so check back!
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