The Serendipitous Slipper Challenge

Hello my creative friends!  It's been awhile!  Today I am blogging about another collaboration.  I can always count on Tina Walker to gather a group of artsy people for a challenge that really makes you think out of the box.

This collaboration/challenge revolved around those "disposable" slippers you get when you go to the spa (I bought a package of 12).  When thinking of what type of project I wanted to do, I couldn't decide between two, so I made both!  Here is what the slippers looked like before deconstructing them.

My "secondary" project was to make a tote. The tote was constructed of washed raw canvas (duck cloth).  After cutting the slippers apart, I dyed a couple of the fabric parts of the slippers in tumeric with sprinkles of instant coffee. I dyed some smaller shapes in acrylic ink.  After everything was dry, I stenciled on shapes with acrylic paint.  I knew I wanted to incorporate the soles of the slippers, so I dabbed some acrylic paint on them and after they were dry, randomly sanded them to show the pattern on the sole.

I machine sewed all of the fabric pieces onto the tote and hand stitched the sole pieces on, then added more hand stitching all over.  I added a cross body shoulder strap made of cotton roping.

My "main" project was a book made after dyeing the fabric with inks, dyes and sprays and machine sewing pieces back to back. I added scraps of ephemera, fabric, paper and embellishments with photos of flowers and plants.

I hope you enjoyed these projects as much as I enjoyed creating them.  I especially love the book!

Here are some of the other projects people created:

Tina Walker
Cheryl Boglioli
Christy Strickler