Valentine's Day + No Boyfriend = Cupcakes + Old Video Games

So it's Valentine's day. And once again: no boyfriend. And I don't even have a ballet lesson as I usually do on Fridays. Well that's ok. I'm spending the evening baking and studying biology. I'm baking macarons,  mint-chocolate cheese cake and peanut butter cupcakes. I guess you could call this a perferct date: I can eat as much as I like, I'm with a person I know and whom I like (me ofcourse ;) ) and I don't have to think about how I look or stress about what to say to someone. After studying I'm going to play Kingdom Hearts II, a sequel to my all-time-favourite game. I know it's a bit old (I think it was releasded in 2006), but I haven't played it yet. My older brother is kind enough to lend me his PS2, and I'm also borrowing his games. When I was younger, I used to watch him play. Kingdom Hearts was one of my favourites to watch. It is a mixture of Disney films, characters from Final Fantasy -games and a very, very complicated story. I loved the story, it was something you wouldn't expect from a videogame. Kingdom Hearts II isn't as great as the Kingdom Hearts. The story is good, but the bosses are either extremely difficult or way too easy. But back to my Valentine's day: I'm just glad that in Finland Valentine's day is more of a friend-thing than a couple-thing. What I mean is that here it's not so much about love but about friendship. But I'm not going to let one over-commercial holiday let me down. I'm going out to buy fabrics for my Red Queen dress tomorrow, and I'll write about it to you as soon as possible. Well, even thought it sounds a bit odd after everything I've written about this day, have a great Valentine's day everyone!

Painting the Shoes Red

This time I'll show you a super-easy but a little time-consuming way to make perfect foot-wear for any costume without making permanent changes to your shoes.

All you need is:

- Shoes you won't be using for a while (you can return the shoes back to the way they were, but you'll have to breake the covers you made to do that)

-Cling film or something similar

-Old notebooks or newspapers

-Flours and water

-Paints, fabric, fake jewellery, anything you wish to decorate your shoes with

-Lacquer ment for craft use

-Leather

-Hot glue (if you want to attach decorations to your shoes)

Step one: protecting the shoes

Wrap about 2-3 layers of cling film on your shoes to protect their surface.

My shoe wrapped in cling film

Step two: making the covers

Glue slivers of paper (newspaper, old notebooks etc.) on the shoes, always putting the next sliver partly on top of the previous. Make atleast two layers. Let dry for four days. Try your shoes on when they have dried. You'll probably have to make slit on the cover to get your foot in. If the slit is too big, you can simply make an enlargement to that part of the cover. Just remember to check if there's still cling film protecting your shoe near the slit.

I used my own "glue" and slivers of old notebooks (bye bye eight grade math). I used a paper shredder to make perfectly same sized, very small slivers. Using bigger slivers saves time, but the result looks neater if you have the patience to spend hours on attaching small slivers. I spend 5,5 hours making one pair of shoes and watching Friends. 

My shoe:)

Recipe for my "glue"

Put some flour into a cup. Add water until you can spread the mixture with a brush.

Don't make too much of this, you will only need about 1 deciliter for a pair of shoes.

 

This is what the "glue" should look like

Paper slivers

Step three:decoration

Now you have the covers made, and the only limit for decorating your shoes is your imagination. If you paint them, remember to apply lacquer to make the colour last. Use lacquer ment for crafts.

I painted my shoes with red, gold and black because I thought they were the Red Queens colours. I have two layers of red paint and decorations of gold and black on my shoes. On top of that I put two layers of brilliant outdoor gloss sealer.

The paints and lacquer I used

Step four: finishing touches

After painting or otherwise decorating your shoes, it's time make finishing touches with shoelaces or glitter or whatever it is your shoes need. You should atleast put leather pieces to the shoe soles, or you will slip. If you have shoes with heels, put leather on the heel bottom too.

I wanted my shoes to really stand out, so I put some fake jewellery on the heels. I think the result looks amazing. I put red leather hearts on the shoe soles and red fabric hearts on the ends of the shoelaces. The inspiration for that came from a finnish shoe designer, Minna Parikka. I love her shoes, but I just can't afford them.  

A leather heart to prevent me from slipping

And this is how my shoes look:

So that's it about shoe-making, I hope you liked this post:) If you have any questions or opinions about creating shoes for a costume, please feel free to comment. I'll answer to every comment:)

Bulletin board: The Red Queen

The first costume I'll write about is the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. I'm a huge Alice in Wonderland fan (you can probably tell that from the name of my blog), and I'm really excited about this costume! My Red Queen is based on the costume Helena Bonham-Carter wore in Tim Burtons Alice in Wonderland (2010). It looks amazing in the movie, and I'm thrilled to create my own version of it. The costume is very detailed, so you'll see around 6-7 posts about it. I hope you don't get bored!:) When I start creating a costume, I collect everything that inspires me (photos, pieces of fabric, samples of certain colours etc.) and put them on my bulletin board. When I know what the costume will look like, I draw some pictures of it and make a list of all the things I need to do or purchase to make my vision come true. I put this list on the bulletin board, and then mark everything I've already done when I make progress. Here's what the bulletin board looks like now:  

If you don't speak Finnish, there isn't much you can understand from the writing. Sorry for that! I decided not to make a very large or detailed drawing of this costume, because it will be almost exactly like the original dress, but I did draw a small sketch. You can see it on the right side of my to do -list.  I have a lot less content here than I usually have on the bulletin board, but I have no idea why... Anyway, since I didn't draw a proper picture, here are some Alice in Wonderland paintings I made about two years ago.

Thank you for reading this post, I hope you liked it:) Next time I'll tell you about making shoes royal enough for a queen. See you then!