Monday, May 28, 2012

I'm Barefoot Again

Well hello there Monday, it's been another long weekend. Saturday was the last family birthday party for the year. Sure, both me and the husband have birthdays yet to come this summer, but we hardly count. There are no balloons, bouncy houses nor streamers to set up for us and I am so happy to be on the other side of all that for one more year, whew.

What's crazy is I was able to come up with a new barefoot sandal design and make a couple of pairs over the weekend among all that craziness. Let me back up though because this is all a friends fault. I used to do a lot of blog  interviews and they always asked what my influences or inspirations were. I always wished I had some intelligent, educated answer, a list of designers or art movements, but I didn't. I would try to fake it and tell people it was the Victorian era or some such nonsense. The real truth of my inspirations are much more mundane. A stroll through the internet, a random image on the television, a comment or request from a customer, or just flipping through a vintage pattern book with a wandering mind.

This time it was an email forwarded to me by a friend full of barefoot sandals. One detail of one design caught my eye and I proceeded to figure how I could use that one detail to create something completely different. The detail? It was a pair with two toe loops. You also know how I love to beat a pattern to death by using variations of it on as many different kinds of pieces as possible, so I used the same vine like pattern as my last necklace and anklet. Of course all I have right now are these phone pictures of them, but I made the first pair in black without any beads and the second I did in white with silver plated beads.

And before you ask, they are surprisingly comfortable. When I do an entirely new design element, I like to test it out a bit so I wore the prototype pair about the house for a while. I crocheted the loops this time too because I figure while most people are used to flip flops with something between their two big toes, the loop around the pinkie would be a tighter fit and I just didn't think a spiral chain would be comfortable. I also started making a third pair in teal with some matching beads. I asked on twitter and facebook for color suggestions and that was the only repeat color. Man there were a lot of color suggestions though.

Hopefully I'll get a few minutes today to finish the teal pair, get them all photographed, and get them all listed too. We picked up some cheap bikes yesterday so we can ride with the kids, so we're certain to do that today. On a side note while you may never forget how to ride a bike, after a decade or so the first few minute on one again are kinda hairy. Though it will certainly beat running along side the kids so they can ride their bikes. There's no schooling today, but we have our last two days tomorrow and Wednesday and then it's technically summer, so be prepared for me to go mad in a couple of weeks.

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