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).