diy: toms sandals

People had been judging me for the well worn state of my TOMS... but hello! they are so comfortable. I had been wearing them for awhile with a hole in each shoe, right where my big toes hit. I knew they looked ridiculous but I wasn't ready to part with them.
I wanted to do a fix up but without the slightest clue of how to sew fabric onto shoes, I threw them into the back of my closet and gave up for awhile.
A few weeks later I remembered the photo I had seen months ago on the Pinterest feed. It was a cut up pair of TOMS turned sandals.

While I really liked this idea, I'm not one to wear anything that looks destroyed.
So I took this as inspiration and created my own pair of TOMS sandals.
This was a really simple project. It did take about two hours but only required things I already had on hand.

Supplies:
TOMS
Pencil
Sharp fabric scissors
Clear nail polish or super glue
Acrylic paint (optional)
Frog tape

The great thing about this project is that it's all yours. You can cut your TOMS however you please. (I will start by saying I recommend this be a porch project.) I began by freehand penciling the shapes I wanted to cut out. I kept the hole at the toe a peep rather than following the diagonal stitch of the fabric.

Because I wanted my lines to be crisp and straight with no frays I poked a small hole through the fabric, cut the top layer of fabric, then cut the thin fabric underneath.

At this point I painted some clear fingernail polish along the cut to prevent future fraying. After being all cut up, I grabbed some red acrylic paint to give the new sandals a bit of a pick me up. I used frog tape (leftover from painting walls) to mask some lines and began painting. It took about two coats of paint to get the bright red I wanted.

Well, hello toesies, you're looking mighty cute in those peep toe TOMS!