12th Street Shoes in our historic Fairhaven neighborhood is having a Stiletto's on Parade decorated shoes contest, could this be more up my alley? First of all there is my ongoing love affair with shoes and then add the endless possibility of applying mixed media to them and you get the Best.Fun.With.Shoes.Ever. I went to Value Village and found a decent pair of 7 1/2 Issac Mizrahi's with a nice line and a good heel to make into my Shoe Art. The first one was themed Mother Nature as a tribute to my garden and the sweet songbirds that nest in the soffets of my art studio every year. I applied sheet moss to the shoe and used some faux foliage and a wee nest on the toe to finish it off. The heel was hacked off partway up and I built a new heel out of stacked stones. I tried to cut the heel off myself and just could not get the hacksaw to go through so I asked husband to do it, thinking it just needed more muscle. Not so, the heel actually had a metal rod through it, he had to cut it with a chop saw. There were sparks flying everywhere, it was very impressive, there were a couple of guys in his shop while he was doing it and they made some comments about not knowing shoes had metal spikes in them and maybe they should duck a little faster when they made their wives mad and got a stiletto chucked at them.
The next one is "The Music of the Night" because I cannot get enough of all things Phantom of the Opera and I love to watch Gerard Butler in anything, even under all that makeup. The sheet music lining the inside and on the back is the actual sheet music from the feature film.
These were outrageously fun to make and I will be doing more, they will be on display at the shoe store the week of the 19th of June and People's Choice judging will be that day, so all my Bellingham art friends, please come and vote for me if you like them!
