decorated shoes

One of my lovely coworkers came up with a grand idea for our “step into spring” display for April – staff could decorate shoes and show off our crafty talents. Last year’s staff craft display was a hit with our patrons. People are often surprised to find out what librarians do in the spare time – hint, we don’t sit at home with our cats and shush people – not all the time anyway!

Here’s what I came up with…

I had a pair of slip on shoes that I bought for a muddy waterfall trail we hiked in Hawaii – a whopping $3 investment that I have more than gotten my money’s worth from. They are my back yard shoes now, but they had potential… and I had the white and silver paint pens already. With a little doodle inspiration:

I was willing to invest another couple of dollars into this project so I headed out to the thrift shop and found exactly what I needed  – a child sized pair of blue jelly-ish shoes with holes all over them (reef shoes perhaps?) and a bunch of fake flowers in brightest yellow. Ten minutes later I had these:

As a little bit of a filler, I offered up my pink Thai silk slippers, encrusted with beads. (Another friend chipped in with her own ones, a silver pair)

And then finally, with the anonymous assistance of another friend, I created a monstrosity of crafting silliness – a pair of legwarmers fashioned from the cut off sleeves of a Cosby-esque sweater (sacrificed from the thrift shop) attached to platform flip flops (quite unwearable) – a kind of winter pedicure boot gone wrong. An awful sight:

Not my finest work. But apparently I have no shame. As it turned out these didn’t make it into the display (there were technical difficulties) which is probably a good thing! It looks great without them. Several other people “stepped up” with their own crazy and wonderful designs and our display queen pulled it all together on a shoestring. woo hoo!

Jo:)

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