A New (to me) Way To Refurbish Old Dress Shoes

Can you believe these are the same shoes?

We bought them at Gap in August 2014.

Carolina needed some shoes to wear in the beauty pageant, and these were the perfect shade of pink.

She loved them.  As you can see she nearly loved them to death.

When the recent beauty pageant rolled around and Carolina needed new shoes I was faced with the daunting question, "Do I take these 5 children out shoe shopping for a new pair of dress shoes for Carolina?  Or do I figure out how to make her current dress shoes work?"  

It didn't take a split second to know that I had no interest in taking my boys shoe shopping for a girl unless absolutely necessary.  There would be too much whining, running, and overall mayhem if I take them to a series of stores.  I thought I remembered seeing someone refurbish some old shoes during a season of Project Run and Play some time ago.  I quickly started the task of scrolling through each and every post on their blog page, in an effort to find what I was looking for.

I did not find it.  But I did find this awesome shoe project.

I like the author a lot.   She has a blog over at www.cathgrace.com  .

I have pinned more than one thing she did on Project Run and Play.

I followed this tutorial with some slight changes.

I took pictures along the way so I can share the experience with anyone that would like to try it.

 Some things you'll need are tacky glue, craft paint, fine glitter, scissors, paint brush, seam ripper, and tweezers.  Not pictured: fleece or felt, needle and 8lb test fishing line, or jewelry making nylon thread, two sizes of beads, embroidery hoop and scrap of cotton fabric to use as stabilizer.

These shoes were so cute when we bought them.  

That's why she wore them every chance she got.

First, remove the pink turned brown ribbon and flower.

The first thing I did was take my closest matching craft paint and paint the shoes.  

I wanted to just cover the scuffs, but the shade was darker, so I had to go ahead and cover the whole shoe.  I was worried this could cause problems with chipping and coming off, but that hasn't been the case.

I took the tacky glue and mixed it with water. 50/50

This made it thinner and more manageable.

Then I painted the dried, painted shoes with it and covered them in the glitter.

 I did 3 coats of glitter.

For the heart shaped beadwork I followed the tutorial by Catherine from www.cathgrace.com very closely with slight differences.  She used felt under the beads and I used fleece.   Because that's just what I had on hand.

Always upcycling where I can I was able to use the small clear beads from this necklace.

My friend Erica gave this to me 5 or 6 years ago when she cleaned out her jewelry box.  She gave me several things that the kids would play dress up with.  But this one had been abandoned in my room for quite some time now.  It was time to give it a new purpose.  The other beads used are ones I purchased from my craft supply store.  Light pink glass beads.

OK, so what you see here is I'm sewing the beads to the heart shaped fleece.

Using the nylon thread, or fishing line, bring your needle up through the fabric, up through a larger bead, up through the smaller bead, over the side of the smaller bead, back down through the larger bead and finally back down into the fabric.  

Repeat until you can't get another bead sewn onto the heart. (Or whatever shape you are using)

Now cut them out and glue them onto the front of your glittered shoe.

Use the tacky glue (not mixed with water) to do this.  I used large paper clips and clothes pins to press them while the glue dried.

That's it!  

Now try keeping her out of them.

Carolina's First & Second Homemade Pageant Dresses

This was her first time to be in a pageant.   It was Kai's 2nd time.
Carolina won Little Miss Queen of Trousdale County.
This was my first time to ever make a smocked dress.  I made it for her Easter dress.  2011

The Little Miss Trousdale County beauty pageant is next weekend.

So I was looking back through old posts and realized I hadn't written a post on Carolina's pageant dresses.

I got the idea for this dress from something I had seen on Etsy.com

Here is a similar video to what I watched to learn how to make a dress. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BGxyQE1VdA

She got 2nd runner up and loved the taste of that trophy!
This was 2012

We didn't participate in any pageants in 2013
Last year (2014) she wore a dress I got at a thrift store.

Pretty little princess!

Christmas Pajamas 2013

So, for 2012 and 2013 I rarely found the chance to blog.

I was getting diagnosed with and trying to gain control of my Grave's disease and Type 1 diabetes during that time and I can say I was totally exhausted all that time.

Funny how now that I have a newborn I seem to have tons more energy.

For one thing, the pregnancy sent my Grave's disease into remission, so that was a blessing.

Thank you Lord!

Here are the Christmas pajamas I never blogged about for the 2013 Christmas season.

Now, mind you, I just took these pictures within the past few days.

Actually, Daniel did this photo shoot with Kai.

He did a good job of making it fun.

When I made the night gown it was longer on her.  I wanted it to be sort of like Cindy Lou Who's nightgown. Coming in toward the legs at the bottom.  Kai wears it often, but asked me to never make her another nightgown with elastic in the bottom again, please.

Guess it's not that comfortable to walk in.

Carolina's pajamas were a two piece. 

The top is made with two different prints of flannel.

I didn't have enough of either to make the whole set, so the sleeves and missing pants have a pink Easter Bunny print on the fabric.

The bodice of the top has frogs and pink Gerber daisies.

You can't see the buttons.  I'll probably get a better picture once the pants turn up.

But the buttons are pink and purple Gerber daisies too.  Perfect.

I don't know how long I've had those buttons in my stash.

Very cute together.

Enoch and Delsin simply got pajama pants.

 

 Enoch is posing.

I keep seeing Delsin's in the dirty clothes, but can't seem to catch him actually wearing them long enough to get a picture.  Gotta get up early to catch that boy.

Delsin's pants are exactly the same, only his size.

If I get a picture I'll update the blog post.

Tiered Bubble Dress

When I saw the Project Run and Play challenge this month was a bubble dress my mind immediately drifted to this red polka dot fabric I had used to make Lenore's Christmas outfit.  

I knew it would make a cute bubble skirt and be perfect for a Valentine's Day outfit too.

But I also knew a lot of people would be making skirts.  Whether or not they would be tiered I wasn't sure.  But I wanted to submit an outfit that would be different from the rest, so I decided to go ahead with Kai's bubble shirt. 

After reading that you could submit more than one entry I decided to see if I could find the time to make a tiered bubble dress by the deadline.  I had fun playing with the design.  Deciding how long to make each tier, whether or not to add sleeves, and what kind of sleeves I wanted it to have was a lot of fun.
  Between the Cub Scouts Space Derby, Kai selling 800 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, and the flu hitting our family for the second time, to say that I've been busy is quite the understatement.  But I burned the midnight oil and managed to get this pretty little dress finished in time.  

I made a tutorial for this dress.  You can find it here.  I did take pictures along the way.

I decided to shirr some white cotton for the waist, because the thought of gathering 6 layers of fabric for the skirt to sew to the bodice just didn't sit well with me. Instead of using elastic thread I used 1/4 inch elastic.  And we just love the flexibility it gave me with playing around with the bodice.  I was able to shorten and widen it a bit to give it a blousy feel.  Carolina loves the way it hugs her abdomen so comfortably. 

My husband recently removed some shirts from his closet, that he no longer wanted and thoughtfully cut the buttons off to save for my sewing supplies before making rags out of the shirts.  

I was glad too, because I wanted small white buttons for the back of the dress, and thanks to him I already had them.

When I was sewing I happened to toss the dress on top of another project I had on the sewing table that had this turquoise fabric and thought it looked so well together I decided to make a little flower to go on the dress.

Thank you for looking!

Christmas PJ's 2012

So I just realized that I never blogged about these PJ's from two years ago.

In fact, I never posted any sewing projects in 2013 at all!

I was teaching a sewing class for two years and posted a few things on our facebook page, but didn't have time to post on the blog page.

Now our old computer crashed, and I don't know when I'll be able to get back the pictures I took.

So, I may try to take some pictures over the next few days of things I haven't blogged about.

I know I'll never get it all though.

Here are some photos I have of Christmas PJs from 2012

Iremember thinking I was too busy to make anything but some pajama pants.

 Above are Deslin's PJ's.  

Below are Carolina's PJ's.

Nevermind the wrinkles on Kai's PJ pants.  I just grabbed them out of her drawer and threw them on the floor to take the pic.

Enoch outgrew his long ago, but I remember them being light blue, and I put a yellow cord coming off the side with snaps on it so we could attach a toy.  I remember him going through a phase at the time where he couldn't keep from dropping his toy and then having a meltdown.  

When I find a picture I'll post it.

Aunt Becky's First Halloween Costume Party & This Year's Homemade Costumes

 For weeks Kai has been asking for an Elsa costume, either for Christmas or sooner.

I was planning to make her one, but didn't have the fabric.

Delsin has changed his mind a zillion times since summer.  

I was going to try to make him some kind of Wild Kratts costume,

but he changed to some kind of zombie Incredible Hulk.

When we got home from the hospital Daniel announced that Mama would not be sewing any costumes this year and they would either stay home on Halloween night or figure out something from the huge costume box already in the playroom.

At first Delsin was in shock and so I told him one year I dressed as a hunch-backed person with make-up and a hoodie with a pillow in my back.

Immediately  he wanted to do that.  So for the costume party this past weekend at Aunt Beck's house he dressed this way, and also for the Cub Scout Halloween party last night.

Enoch was easy.  We already had a couple of Spiderman costumes in the costume box.  He was happy.

For Kai and Carolina, I had to go to Walmart today after Lenore's first pediatrician appointment.  I had to pick up a few essentials, so I grabbed a couple of yards of turquoise tulle, and a roll of 10 yards of turquoise tulle with glitter on it, and a roll of glittery turquoise ribbon (1.5 inch).  I was going to make hair bows with the ribbon, instead of crowns, but I just ran out of time.  I should work on those today, perhaps.
So, I took the 2 yards of tulle and cut two perfect length capes out of it.  I used this tutorial as a reference for the style of cape I wanted.

Being reminded of this tutorial,

I decided to use Carolina's old beauty pageant dress we still had in the costume box, as the skirt to her Elsa dress.
I had Kai cut up the rest of the blue and white tulle we had on spools and I tied it onto some elastic to make the skirt for her Elsa dress. 
For the bodices I made a tube out of that 10 yard toll of 6inch tulle with glitter on it and slipped that over their heads.  Underneath it all I picked up some turquoise long sleeve shirts and leggings at Walmart earlier in the day.  So I did a tiny bit of sewing, but not much really.  I was able to put a couple of Elsa costumes together, WITH breastfeeding breaks I might add, in about  2 hours.
I'll make the hair bows soon and post pictures of those too.

Lenore and I thoroughly enjoyed staying home and cuddling.  I just couldn't take her out in the night air, being less than a week old and all.  I'm not sure if the kids will get to go trick or treating at all this year.  If Daniel is working late I might wrap Lenore up in a baby carrier under my coat and let them walk up River Street, which is just the next street over.  We'll see...

Edited to add a few pictures from Halloween night.
The bottom picture in this collage shows Carolina's expression when she found out Daddy wouldn't be able to get home from work in time to take them trick-or-treating.
But I had already come up with a back-up plan.

I didn't get any pictures of anybody wearing their costumes together, because once I announced Daddy couldn't come home I quickly announced that I'd take them to the street behind our house (where 6 houses were giving out candy).
So I put Lenore in my ring sling and wrapped her up with me in my coat.

 She wasted no time in falling asleep.

 Before she knew what happened we were back home in warmth for cuddling.