Monday, April 16, 2012

Aren't Baby Shoes the Cutest?

We finally came up with a way to save all those baby shoes we didn't want to throw away: make something artistic with them! Why not? For about Joey's first year, we had a growing mountain of little baby shoes that were too small for him but we couldn't bear to throw them out. I think I saw this idea in a RealSimple magazine, but of course I did it my own way. :)
I went to Michael's and used one of their coupons to get this shadowbox (I never go to Michael's without a coupon...). It ended up being $11 or something ridiculous like that. I thought this was a great shape for all those little shoes, although don't ask me what's going to happen when I run out of room. I haven't thought that far ahead, yet. New shadowbox, maybe?

We decided which shoes we wanted to keep. It ended up being the right shoe from all his pairs of tennies. I printed off the month tag labels with the time he last wore the shoes and used my cricut to cut out the labels. I fastened snaps to the sides of the labels and attached the whole assembly with glue dots. They stick really well to this fabric background on the shadowbox, surprisingly.
Then I used much larger 3d glue dots to adhere the shoes to the fabric shadowbox because they needed something a little stronger. Don't worry about them sticking out any more than they already do, though. The 3d dots don't actually add any height.

So, in the end, we were able to get rid of all the dirty shoes we were keeping and keep something that really reminds us of how quickly they grow.
We've got this cute little baby wall going for Joey, and soon I look forward to making another little shoe shadowbox with perhaps some pink, flowery shoes!