PJ's Coffee Shoe

I suddenly notice that I have a string of shoes to share here that are all food or drink related! That's probably about 25% coincidence, 25% the fact that food and drink are such big parts of the New Orleans cultural experience and (if I'm being perfectly honest with y'all) 50% being pregnant and homesick! While there will be more food and drink shoes coming, I'll be mixing it up with some other themes too, I promise!!

For this shoe, I used the same general approach that I used on the 2014 Shoe Bliz shoe, I converted the back half of a shoe (the heel area) to a to-go coffee cup with lid. I glittered the main body of the shoe with a nice dark coffee brown (Recollections, color "espresso") then decorated the to go cup as a PJ's coffee cup. The red is Recollections "cherry." The black lid is Martha Stewart "onyx" and the white glitter on the bottom is probably ArtMinds (I have about 4 different brands that I use interchangeably when I need white glitter).

For the logo I traced and transferred using my go-to technique and did it in two pieces (the PJ's letters and the box). The purple is Martha Stewart "charoite." The yellow in the logo came out a little exaggerated because I could only get the lines so thin (I used WOW! brand "sunflower" over yellow Scribbles paint). I would've liked to have gotten the logo tracing a little cleaner, but it should still be recognizable. There are two logos on the cup, one on each side:

I covered the arch across the top of the shoe with some "whipped cream" (silicon based caulk) sprinkled with "cinnamon" (Martha Stewart "copper").

I got the idea to use silicon caulk to create texture from the DIY slice of cake postcards and I am having so much fun playing with it. I can't wait to share some of my other experiments with it here.

2015 Fried Shrimp Poboy Shoe

Another 2015 shoe in progress: The Shrimp Poboy Shoe!

I've had this Robert Tabor sandwich flipflop pinned on my inspiration shoes board for quite a while now and finally got around to making one this year. I liked the sandwich concept and loved the idea of using flip-flops for something because I like to try a shoe-shape outside of my traditional pump comfort zone and flip-flops are super cheap (this pair was like $1 at Michael's). I did think I could make it more New Orleanean, so instead of just a sandwich I went with a nice iconic fried shrimp poboy. I should also point out that Mary Ross totally beat me to the punch on this one, making an awesome roast beef poboy Nyx purse last year.

I started out by making some paper mache shrimp to stuff my poboy. I used paper towels, Elmer's glue and pink tissue paper:

Here are my shrimp before "breading and frying"

I achieved the "breading and frying" by covering them with a chunky copper glitter (not sure what brand, something at Michael's). I usually never use chunky glitter, but I thought it would work for this. I mixed in a little fine gold, copper and black glitter as well, but it was mostly chunky glitter on the shrimp.

For lettuce, I bought some pale green tulle (same as I used to make the ruffle on the KaleGate shoe, but a different shade). The tulle was already a little glittery, but I also added some extra glitter (Martha Stewart, "limeaid"). Adding glue to the tulle to apply the glitter also allowed me to add some more naturalistic creases and wrinkles in the lettuce.

For the tomatoes, I cut circles out of foam (I traced the same circle six times, but didn't worry about following the lines too closely when I cut them out so they would seem more real). The tomatoes are Martha Stewart "carnelian" with Tulip dark red glitter around the edge for the tomato skin. I thought about adding more detail to interiors of the tomato slices like seeds, but figured it wouldn't show when the poboy was assembled.

For the bread, I removed the strap from one of the flip-flops, then covered them both with Martha Stewart "copper." On the bottom piece, I added a nice generous smear of "mayo" (white Scribbles 3D paint with white iridescent glitter). On the underside of the top piece (with the strap still attached) I added some red glitter hot sauce (which doesn't really show in the pictures or in the finished sandwich).

Here are the finished ingredients all lined up ready to assemble:

Fried shrimp and lettuce

A little more lettuce, tomato slices and bread

Everything lined up (I have a table just for my Muses shoes to work on now!)

Next step, I hot-glued together the top and bottom pieces; fried shrimp went on the bottom flip-flop and lettuce and tomatoes went on the top flip flop (when I tried assembling it and the shrimp kept overflowing my husband said "don't worry, that happens on real poboys too." Sounding more and more like a native, that one...)

Lastly, I assembled the top and bottom pieces into the finished poboy:

Still needs some touch-ups, and of course it needs "Muses 2015" (maybe relatively small on the straps?). I  also really want to photograph it with a bottle of Barq's before it's thrown.

Overall I'm pretty pleased...it's not a perfect recreation or anything, but it certainly makes me hungry for a trip to Parkway (granted, that's pretty much always the case).

Lucky Dog Cart Shoe

After all my big talk about how much I love working on shoes year round, I went and took a very long hiatus from glittering. Apart from the Kale-Gate Shoe I posted in March, I hadn't really worked on any 2015 shoes. Various things came up: big exciting stuff at work, moving to a new place and (the biggest impediment to glittering) I got pregnant. My husband and I are expecting our first (a boy) in about a month and change. So, while I don't think I'll be able to get many shoes done for 2015 (certainly nowhere near as many as I finished in 2014), now that we're moved and settled and I'm trying to make some now while I still can. I have about a dozen shoes in progress right now. I've been working very slowly, but I have a handful of shoes in progress that are close enough to done to be worth sharing here.

We moved so we'd have more room and (joy of joys!) this included a garage where I could set up a little work space for shoes:

This was before I actually starting using it...It's a LOT messier now

It's nothing spectacular but I love it beyond words. In our old place, I had to unpack and repack things whenever I wanted to work on shoes because I didn't have dedicated space, so I spent about as much time cleaning up after myself as working on shoes. Now I can work on things and leave them out, and it's way easier to find things now that my supplies and shoes are better organized.

Anyways, without further ado, let me share some pictures of a nearly finished 2015 shoe - The Lucky Dog Shoe!

This shoe is inspired by the Lucky Dog Cart, which I would guess is recognizable to any New Orleanian whose been in the French Quarter and was, of course, featured prominently in Confederacy of Dunces. The "bun" is Recollections "champagne" and Martha Stewart "copper," to achieve the two-tone effect. I could probably have gone a little browner to get the top of the bun a little toastier, but that was the closest thing I had in the stash without custom blending.  The "hot dog" is Martha Stewart "carnelian" and the mustard  is WOW! glitter in "sunflower" (over yellow Scribbles paint because the yellow glitter is  pretty translucent). The top and bottom edges of the top bun are lined with gold sequin trim.

The interior is Martha Stewart "garnet" (to match the red box on top of the cart). The big chunky heel is meant to stand in for the brown box on the end of the cart, with "New Orleans Tradition" rotated 90 degrees (artistic license). The heel is Martha Stewart "brownstone" and the yellow lettering is, like the mustard, WOW! glitter "sunflower" over yellow Scribbles paint.

The "LUCKY DOGS" lettering is Martha Stewart "orange topaz," with yellow edging (again, "sunflower" over yellow Scribbles paint). On the other side, "MUSES" is written in the same font as "LUCKY DOGS."

  The umbrella is a little drink garnish umbrella painted with WOW! "sunflower" and Martha Stewart "garnet." Where on the Lucky Dog cart's umbrella "Enjoy Coca-Cola" would be written, I've written "2015" in (Scribbles paint in "white mist" with white glitter).

Wee glittery "2015" umbrella

Profile view showing the lettering on the left side

I'm toying with getting some wheels on there as well to make it extra cart-like. I'll post more pictures if/when I add the wheels. More shoes very soon!