Ruby Slippers

The first part of the World Book Day costume (see here) that I made was the ruby slippers that Dorothy wears. I figured that these might be the single most important component of the costume and it was therefore vital that I had them sorted. The initial step was finding a pair of shoes that I could customise, and so I had a hunt through the old shoes I owned, thinking I had some old ballet pumps somewhere. Unfortunately I couldn't find any of the pairs I thought I owned still, so off to ASDA Living we went in the hope of getting some cheap ones. 

I managed to find some pretty comfortable shoes, as they were softer than most. I figured this was important as I didn't have time or the opportunity to wear them in before I had to wear them for my costume. They were also only £6 which I thought was pretty reasonable!

The first step to customising them into ruby slippers was to paint the denim fabric with red fabric paint so that if any of the glitter I was to put on them were to come off then it wouldn't be quite as obvious. I therefore grabbed my leftover Dylon fabric paint and simply painted a coat all over the shoes. 

I left the paint to dry (while getting on with other aspects of the costume) and then came back to them to compete the next step. Technically, the next step would be to iron the paint to set it and then wash the fabric, but as these are shoes ironing them was difficult. I therefore skipped the setting and washing of the fabric paint, and moved onto adding the glitter to the shoes. Who doesn't love adding glitter to things?! 

To make these shoes all glittery, I simply brushed on some PVA glue (in sections, so it didn't dry out too much) and then shook on some red glitter (again, I already owned this).

After repeating the process all the way around both shoes, I ended up with two rather sparkly shoes, and was rather impressed at how good they were looking!

I wanted to make sure that the glue was completely dry before I did the final step of the process, so I left them alone for 48 hours. Then it was simply a case of spraying them with hairspray in an attempt to make sure the glitter stayed (at least for one full day). In the end I gave each shoe three coats of hairspray, and they did thankfully keep their glitter remarkably well!

So, there you have it, Dorothy's ruby slippers, DIY-style!