I know. It's been a couple of days a week. OKAY! A little bit over a week... But I'm still here chipping away, doing what I do, even if I'm not telling you all about it! But seeing as though I've been just a little slack, how about I share something special with you?
Girls, you know those little ballet flat style shoes that are everywhere at the moment? The ones that are super comfortable and cute to boot! In every colour and texture imaginable, it's reeeeeeally hard to resist buying pair after pair after pair. You justify it, because you can confidently say you WILL wear these. Not like those super sexy boots you just had to have last Winter, and then threw off an hour in, due to a severe case of blisters and cramps.
These are flat. They are versatile. Most of the time, they are even pretty cheap.
But. You only have two feet, and there are only 365 days a year 7 days in a week that you can manage to wear them on, so let's be realistic: The average girl is not going to wear more than 3 pairs of shoes from her collection per week. Perhaps I should play it safe and speak for myself: I will only wear 4-5 MAXIMUM different pairs in a week, and I'm not even a shoe hoarder. If I had a daily uniform, the number of different shoes I could wear in a week would diminish I'm sure. It's true, I do have a few more pairs than some, but far less than others!
Anyway, I now own 5 pairs of ballet flats. We won't count the other styles right now. Two pairs of these flats have pretty embellishments, and one of those pairs got stripped the other day, so I was down to one pretty pair, and 4 plain. This was okay, until I started lusting over a pair of shoes at the shops yesterday. See, they weren't a particular colour I needed, but the pretty cluster of tulle and stones on the toe were enough to make me consider whether I could get through the rest of the week on $2.
Luckily logic stepped in at this moment to point out that I;
a) have three pairs of shoes in similar colour tones
b) am crafty and have all the materials neccessary to recreate almost the exact copy of those cute toe embellishments.
c) could not afford to live off $2 for the rest of a week that involves 2 birthdays.
So today I got my craft on to save me from a thriftless shoe purchase!!
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| I pulled out my box of leftover bridal tulle (always thinking thrifty, I kept the scraps after alterations to my beautiful wedding dress) and cut a few pieces to length and width that would suit what I wanted to create. |
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| *This isn't a full tutorial, because to be honest, there are hundreds of fabric flower tutorials out there, and the only difference to mine is that I winged it! So there are no snaps of my progress here, but I can tell you that I gathered and stitched my way to some nice 'flowers' of tulle and got to picking which pair of shoes to start with... |
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| There were 3 pairs that could do with some pretty additions, and I chose to fix up my wedding shoes first. |
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| They looked like this on my wedding day, and were one of the many hand made details that made our day so special. They also marked the beginning of my fascination with embellishing shoes! I kept them this way for quite a while, but found I wasn't wearing them so much anymore and pulled everything off the other day so I could start fresh! |
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| I scoured the house for anything I could possibly use to add some shine, but unfortunately all of my 'blingy' bits are at my Mum's, and typically I couldn't possibly wait 24 hrs to start the project, so I found the best I could and got on with it. |
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| Using a necklace I adore but cannot wear due to my skin's aversion to cheap jewellery (I swear it's true Hubs!), I created a cluster of these tiny gold petals and stitched them to my tulle flowers. |
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| Perfect!! A little trimming to get everything matched up, and some securing and I was done!! |
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| I just love the mix of tulle and shiny baubles! |
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*Contented sigh*
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I still have 2 pairs left to embellish, and I can't wait to get started on them over the weekend!
Have you been getting crafty lately? Do you suddenly want to stick stuff onto every pair of shoes that you own? I know I do! If you've got a thrifty project to share, send me some photos and we can share it with all the other thrifty people!
A special shout out to my mum, whose birthday we are celebrating today! Happy birthday Mummy Bear, how glad I am you were brought to this world, and that in turn you brought me here too! I love you whole heartedly xox
Cassie xo
