You know how sometimes when you get a good idea, and idea that seems so cool in your mind that the niggly but extremely persistent part of your brain gets so worried that it won’t work so it self-sabotages?  Personally I find there are a few stages to this tortured process:

• Eureka!! You have a Great Idea!! You are a genius!!
• You turn the great idea over in your head for a while. You google to see if anyone has *stolen* your Great Idea.
• You turn it over in your head a bit longer cos the Idea is So Great you want to make sure the execution is flawless.
• Finally it’s time to drop some cash! You venture out to buy supplies.
• You find that some supplies are a lot more expensive than you thought.
• You buy only half the supplies you need and tell yourself the rest will go on sale at some point and that you can wait.
• Years pass…
• Your husband buys the supplies you felt were too expensive 2 years ago for a completely unrelated reason and you start a blog that commits you to doing projects so you finally get to it.

(okay maybe the last bit isn’t part of the usual cycle..)

ANYWAY… a few years ago when I was still living in London I bought my first pair of grown up black pumps, the Caprice from Jones Bootmaker. Standing at just over 3 inches, she was leather, fabulous and sexy but professional and I was going to stride confidently behind my pupil master like Nelle Porter without The Hair. Caprice would help me walk on air across London’s cobblestones, and I would never perspire, not even in summer in an overheated courtroom despite wearing pantyhose (Sidenote: We were told whilst doing the BVC ( I think!) that bare legs in court were a no-no).  I quickly found out the height was not the most practical for carrying lever arch files especially when one has temperamental ankles that like turning in different directions without warning, but I still managed to pull her out for evening events. One day while teetering slightly, I scraped the back of the heel on the cobbled streets on day and it was a bit like biting your tongue. One scratch turned into 2 and the risk of Caprice being mistaken for a kitty scratching post grew.

I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away as the front of the shoes were fine (waste not want not), she were comfy albeit a tad high and chucking her would feel like I was admitting defeat – that I was not going to be Ginger Rogers and would forevermore be wearing only comfy Bleyers when I danced. So she followed me across the seas from London to Singapore where cabs are cheaper so my high-heel skills didn’t really need to improve, but darn there are lots of drain grates in HDB estates so she gained a few more battle scars and was placed in early retirement under my desk.

Enter the Great Idea – d’oh I just needed to cover up the scratches somehow! Permanent marker or  nail polish wouldn’t have worked as in some places the leather had been scraped off the heel, not just scratched.

[Insert tortured process here and press repeat]

The stumbling block was Mod Podge. I have read about this seemingly magical stuff for years on design blogs but when I tried to lay my twitchy craft-hands on some in Singapore I balked at the price in Spotlight. I can’t even remember how much it was, but it was definitely much more than the US retail price and seemed overpriced for what I thought was essentially a glue? And so Caprice sat all lonesome under my desk at work ( well she wasn’t really that lonesome as she had friends there.. did I mention I have a shoe habit? but I digress)

One fine day as we were in Art Friend spending some birthday money and the Husband was buying acrylic panels, he picked up a Mod Podge variety pack to do some gluesperiments, I looked in the basket and went “Oh, you are buying Mod Podge!!!”. The Husband looked a bit bemused at my (over)reaction and enthusiastic monologue about the decoupage world, but I took it as a Sign. The Craft Gods had spoken, I could feel the Warp overtaking me and it was a good pain.

Despite the Chaos  Craft Gods, It took another 3 (?) months before I decided to stop standing there like a lemon and get down to brass tacks.

Supplies :

• Mod Podge – I used the gloss version as I figured the extra shine would look pretty and help mask imperfections
• Something to squeeze the Mod Podge out on  –  I just used a bit of paper.
• Newspaper ( I could already hear my Mum’s scolding at the sight of shoes on the dining table.)
• A damp rag to wipe off any extra Mod Podge before it dried. As a point of interest, although I live in an island with over 80% humidity all year round, Mod Podge still dried much quicker than I expected.
• A paint brush. Some sites suggest using spongey craft brushes, but I didn’t have any and wasn’t about to sacrifice any Scotch-Brites.
• Rubber bands to secure the paper to the heels while drying.

My initial plan was to wrap the whole heel in paper. IHowever I quickly realised that the curves would make things tricky even if I was able to use a template, and considered using some fabric.

The lovely textured and art-decoesque envelope is something I saved from a friend’s wedding invitation years ago. I earmarked it for Caprice but the tortured process got in the way. The extremely sequinned thing in the bottom left corner is the bottle sleeve that accompanied the free bottle of body wash I was given when I signed up for a credit card 4 years ago. It has been hoarded in the scrap box as figured it would come in useful one day so   ( But that day has not arrived yet..)

After staring at Caprice a bit more, I remembered that one of the effects I’ve always liked is for things to be asymmetrical – e.g. a slanted hemline or off-kilter necklace. And so the design evolved to this:

I secured the paper with rubber bands and left everything to dry overnight. The next day I removed the rubber bands and painted on another layer of Mod Podge to seal everything.

I am very pleased with the outcome, but I wish I took more care with the measuring and cutting before glueing the paper on. It was a rather time consuming process to trim the paper around the join between the heel and the sole of the shoe, as well as the between the end of the heel and the heel tip. It may have been quicker if I’d used the Husband’s Dexter-style set of knives but those things make me a little nervous so I settled for a little retractable blade.

I wore them to work on Friday with jeans and am very happy to report that (a) I didn’t scratch them, and (b) 2 colleagues remarked on how unusual and cool they looked and asked me about them :). Yay for external validation!