Krewe O' Muses Hurricane Shoe

I really like shoes with unconventional structural elements, like a lot of the shoe sculptures by this artist. I've also been bookmarking shoes with weird heels: like these gnomes, these R2-D2 heels, these goddess statue heels and these dinosaur heels.

I wanted to try and replace the heel of a shoe with a hurricane and make a Pat O'Brien's Muses shoe. I looked around for a little version of the Hurricane glass, and found a few options (here and here, if you're curious), then settled on the version that Pat O'Brien's sells (the 1.5 oz Pony Glass). I really, really wanted a plastic Hurricane glass, and thought it might exist for parties or something, but haven't been able to find one. Also, using a glass one breaks my no more than $5 in supplies per shoe rule. As such, this shoe is more a thought experiment, and not an actual throw.

Anyways, my husband took the heel off a shoe that was the right heel height (he started with a dremel, then threw the towel in on that and switched to a full blown saw). Here's the shoe after a little trimming and de-heel-ification:

I filled 1.5 oz Pony glasses with a blend of Martha Stewart glitters (cherry and orange) with a little Recollections cherry thrown in for sparkle. I made two, so I could do more than one Hurricane shoe, though my second won't have a Hurricane heel, it's just going to be adorning the shoe. Michael's carries this awesome plastic ice clusters for floral arrangements/vase filler:

I filled the mini glasses with the fake ice (I used hot glue, though if I had it to do over, I would use something clear-drying to maintain the ice illusion), and a little bitty coffee stirrer straw cut to be the right length:

I glued the ice-filled glass to the de-heeled shoe, and started glittering. The exterior is Martha Stewart "emerald," which was the best match to the Pat-O's green in my stash. The interior and platform are the mix of reds and oranges I blended to fill the glass (~2-3 coats over a base coat of Recollections cherry because they were pretty sheer and the base shoe was black). I added a little collar of black lace around the edge to represent the wrought iron balconies in the French Quarter. I lined the edges with silver braid or black sequin trim:

I added the lettering using trace-and-transfer. The glitter I used was Recollections "bling." It says "Have Fun!" across the toe in the Pat O'Brien's font. On one side is "2014" and on the other I wrote "Krewe O' Muses" (get it?) in my best estimate of what that would look like in the Pat O'Brien's font.

I added a little orange wedge (made from foam) and a little cherry (a red glass bead with a red plastic cord for the stem) to finish off the Hurricane:

So, in summary a fun shoe to make even if it can't be thrown. Now that I've walked through it, I'm thinking I may pick up some little plastic cocktail glasses if I'm at a Party City to whip up some other NOLA cocktails (an absinthe shoe could be quite pretty).