Tutorial: Bow Shoe Clips

On a recent shopping escapade, I bought shoes. Specifically, these shoes:

They’re cute, huh?

Admittedly I don’t usually go for open-toe shoes, but I loved the design of these and when I tried them on, they fitted beautifully!

Also they were £16, which slightly encouraged me to buy them.

They also match a retro leather handbag that I picked up from a charity shop for £1

I’ve worn these shoes a couple of times now, but decided to jazz up the style even more with some shoe clips!

The great thing with shoe clips is that they can be moved around the shoe to create different looks. So effectively you’re getting six or seven different pairs of shoes from just the one pair (or more, if you make more shoe clips). Bargain! 

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There are plenty of shoe clip tutorials around online, but here’s how I made mine:

Time needed: 30 minutes (approx)

You need:

Scrap of vinyl

Scrap of felt

2 clip on earring bases (or shoe clip bases)

Scissors

Ruler

Multipurpose glue

Glue gun & glue sticks

Newspaper or scrap card for protecting your work surface.

1. Put down some newspaper/scrap card for doing your glue gun work on. Plug glue gun in and switch on to allow it to heat up.

2. Cut two strips of vinyl the height you want the bow and twice the desired width, plus 2cm. Wrong side facing up, put a line of multipurpose glue down the centre of the strip (widthways) and one end. Stick the gluey end to the right side of the other end to make a loop (right side facing out) then stick down onto the back centre of the strip.

I totally forgot to take more pictures of this step, sorry! Hopefully the explanation makes enough sense :)

3. Put your half-finished bows aside to allow the glue to dry. Cut four small circles of felt, big enough to cover the back and front of the earring clips. Half-open your earring clips. Put a dab of hot glue down the centre of two of the circles and stick to the back of the clips. For the front, apply hot glue to the front of the clips and stick on the remaining two felt circles.

Tip: use hot glue sparingly. Too much makes a real mess, as you can see on the clip on the right!

4. Cut a thin strip of vinyl (around 1-1.5cm). Take one of the bows you started in step 2 and pinch it down the middle to make it more bow shaped.

This is where it gets a bit fiddly--it took me ages!

Wrap the end of the strip around the centre of the bow so it overlaps at the back. Secure with a dab of hot glue and trim off the excess.

I decided to use hot glue rather than multipurpose for this step, since it dries much faster and is easy to peel off if I made a mess (which I did).

5. Add a blob of hot glue to the back centre of the bow and stick to the clip base.

6. Play with your new shoe accessories! Or make another set. How many different looks can you make?

Total cost of project: £0 (I had everything lying around; it would have cost more if I’d decided to buy shoe clip bases!)

And for those who are curious as to the contents of the lovely little vintage case in the first picture...

Lovely little vintage photographs!

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