We know, we know. Its the end of summer. But hey, look at your feet! Are you wearing flip flops? Of course you are. It’s only September. Why on earth would you be wearing anything else? We love flip flops so much we named our blog after them (clearly, we also love freedom). We’ve all seen the Pinterest boards with DIY flip flops, and we said to ourselves, “Hey! They’re not better than us!” So we took a trip to the craft store (obvi) and Old Navy ($2 flip flops!!!) to see if that was just crafting hubris.
Craft stores love me.
Something I would recommend is planning out your flippy floppies beforehand. It IS a lot of fun to run in and grab everything you see that would be pretty to hot glue onto a flip flop, but when you walk out of the store $75 later you may have some buyers’ remorse. KIDDING! Who would get buyers’ remorse at a craft store? That’s like saying you can get buyers’ remorse from Michael Kors. IT. JUST. DOESN’T. HAPPEN. However, if you are one of the few that is plagued by this increasingly prevalent infliction (thanks US economy!), I would recommend going in with a plan.
Let’s start off with a simple pair of flip flops. I made these for Big Sug. He is a big football fan. Can you guess his team? The ribbon wrapped flip flops are by far the easiest.
First, hot glue or stitch the ribbon to itself at the base of the thong. It has a better chance at survival if you wrap it and glue it to itself than wrapping and gluing to the plastic. Especially since it’s plastic. And the glue is hot. Hot plastic is NOT what’s up.
My feet are big…but these are definitely for Big Sug.
Hot glue as you go! Hot glue is the greatest invention in the history of ever. I hot glued his flip flops about every other time I wrapped them. Just put a little dab of glue on the fabric and wrap the fabric around the glue.
Is your hot glue gun your bff, too? Don’t tell Whit!
When you get to the tip of the thong, trim the ribbon and hot glue the end piece on the underside. This way you don’t have a big frayed piece sticking out. I recommend wrapping each side separately.
Voila!
Then wrap the other!
Dos!
I wrapped the top of the thong with the opposite color. This is GREAT for sports teams. Most boys aren’t going to wear ribbon flip flops, but if they did this is how they’d do it.
Those are some MAN feet!
Now let’s do some lady shoes!
Start with a pair of flip flops. Obvi.
I feel an elephant ear costume is in the works.
Wrap the flip flops in ribbon, much like the first pair.
Such concentration!
And watch this video as Whitney crosses the ribbon between the two straps to make a bed of ribbon for some bling.
We had a video of me demonstrating how to bling out your flips flips after the ribbon bed is created. Unfortunately, that video is on Whit’s phone and she can no longer find it. Suffice it to say that there was a LOT of hot-gluing of beads onto the ribbon.
And the finished product! These are fairly simple, too. However, I would recommend stitching each bead on if you can/have the time. This pair is falling apart (all the little pearls and jewels are falling off) and it’s only been about 2 weeks. All the other pairs are holding on just fine.
These flips are no flop. Hardy har har.
Now for our last pair!
For this pair, we took fabric and folded it over itself to make an inch long strip.
Also, get a friend like Whit who gets hella OCD about straight lines.
Then we “hemmed” the fabric with hot glue. We only glued about 4 inches at a time to ensure that the fabric would stick best. Then we cut the strip away from the rest of the fabric.
With more flip flops in the background.
After, we wrapped the flip flops with the strip of fabric. When gluing for this, make a loop around the base of the flip flop with the fabric and glue the fabric together. As you wrap the flip flop, continuously overlap the fabric and glue the overlapping pieces.
For the next part, we sewed on a little bling. Here is the finished project!
Gorgeous!
Did you like these flip flops? Do you want your own pair? Send us a pic of your flip-flops with your feet like the picture below to flipflopsandfreedom@gmail.com and we’ll enter you into our contest to win this lovely pair.
We’ll also be using pictures of flip-flops in our new re-design, so look for your little feetsies soon!
LG and I have lived in DC for four and three years, respectively. That’s a fairly significant chunk of time. Despite that, we are occasionally AMAZED by some of the extremely strange trends and habits that we run into out here. So once a month we have decided to bring you a “WTF DC” post, where we talk about things we have found here inside the Beltway that totally confuse us. Let’s kick it off with critter pants.
There is no question that different parts of the country have their own distinct style. Some things are adorable and some are, well, perplexing – I’m looking at you, Nantucket Reds. DC is a strange hybrid of East Coast and Southern style, so there are many interesting sartorial displays to be found but by FAR the weirdest to us is the critter pant.
Where are they swimming to? What are they swimming away from?
Let me explain the standard critter pants:
1) Take a perfectly normal pair of pants.
2) Dye them a bright, obnoxious color.
3) Cover them with any random animal.
4) Throw on a belt with an equally random pattern (no need to match it to the shorts).
5) Add a button up and boat shoes and walk out into the world like what you are wearing is normal.
And finally
6) Don’t just stop at pants! Washingtonians feel free to do this with what ever they might want to wear – dresses, shorts, flip flops, belts, ties, sunglasses. THE MADNESS WILL NOT END!
I want to meet the guy who said, “I should put swordfish on some shorts.”
Our friend KC sent us a few examples from his own critter pant collection, to demonstrate for our California readers who have no earthly idea what we are talking about. We love KC and he is a perfect Southern Gentleman but DEAR LORD does he own a lot of critter pants.
The most confusing thing about critter pants is that they seem to be acceptable casual/beach wear. This is where we must take our stand. How is this even remotely acceptable??? Everyone knows that appropriate casual wear is some board shorts, Rainbows and a tank top! Where, oh where, did DC go so wildly astray? I am now on a mission to civilize (or decivilize, as it may be) all our male friends and get them into some appropriate board shorts, even if it’s the last thing I do in this town. Bonus points if I can get them to embrace suns out, guns out.
Of course, even the righteous can occasionally succumb to the Dark Side.
Sellout.
Oh LG. Sigh.
whitbear8
Flip-Flops & Freedom 