Did It Myself Craft Tutorials: Shoes refashion

On a trip to my local K-Mart, I found a pair of shoes which were marked down to two dollars for being 'shop soiled' (A.K.A broken). Not one to pass up a bargain, I knew with a few alterations, they could become a unique pair of super cute shoes. The techniques I used can also be used to give old shoes a bit of a make over.

Here's what I started with

And here is the finished product.

Read on for the tutorial :)

For this project you will need

-A pair of shoes. Broken decorations are fine, but you want to use something that is structurally sound

-A hot glue gun

-Material to decorate your shoes with. I used red PVC.

-Pegs or clips to hold your decorations in place while glueing (optional)

That's all :)

First thing I did was remove the straps from both pairs of shoes to give me a blank canvas to start with. I then set them aside while I worked on the decorations.

The straps and bows are made with red PVC. I started with two strips long enough to reach from one side of the sole to the other (one for each shoe), where the strap was previously. I then glued the edges in to make a 'ribbon'.

I then attached the ribbons to the shoes with hot glue, trimming the edges even with the soles.

To make the bow, cut out a rectangle of your fabric. On the back, mark one quarter, half and three quarters of the length from the longest side, and one to two centimetres in from the short end. Place a thick line of hot glue along the short line between the quarter and three quarter lines (shown below) and allow to dry. This will help keep the ends of your bows in shape.

While this is drying, make two short ribbons from the fabric, thinner and shorter than the first ones, for the middle of the bows

When dry, cut off the corners of the bow piece, then glue in the short sides

Then the long sides

Turn over and pinch in to a bow shape, securing with one of the short ribbons. Repeat for the other shoe. Stretch the edges of the ribbon so they curl backwards at the ends.