How to make Flip flops....

...from an old yoga mat and some cardboard. And don´t tell me you didn´t always wanna aquire this particular skill.

Remember this post? Yeah, even a year ago we were interested in making shoes. Or, well, Ronnie was. Ronnie´s interested in everything. So, when we went through our camping stuff and found an old, wasted yoga mat, inspiration struck.

Here´s what we did:

We took an old piece of cardboard and traced Ronja´s feet.

Then we used the cardboard pieces as templates to cut the feet from the yoga mat. We cut three feet for each foot - two for the sole and one to go over the cardboard, for more comfort.

Our yoga mat was quite thin, though.

We also cut some red fabric for the sole, to make it look prettier:

We glued everything loosely together with the beloved hotglue gun.

Also, we cut some strips and braided them, to make some sort of rope.

We marked where the holes for the ropes had to go:

Then we poked a hole in there, which was tough work, and inserted the middle of our braided ropes in there - comme ca:

We opened the knots in the ends (we had only made them so our braided fabric strips wouldn´t untangle), and squeezed the flattened ends in between the layers of the sole:

Then we decided the sides looked ugly. We tried to fix that with the best fixer of all time - duct tape.

Well... and then we had shoes! Real, homemade shoes!


Ronja even wore them succesfully for a bike trip:

 

They might not be the most practical shoes ever. Also, they might not survive a single rain fall, and your neighbours might give you funny looks. BUT! But making them teaches that you can make things you might just know as industrially produced articles, and that you don´t have to throw away old yoga mats, and it will treat you with the awesome feeling you get when you actually wear something you made.  And isn´t that something?

Music: 

Have some happy Steve Moakler!

Tim´s just back with the cidre press, it´s time to harvest our pears!