Sometimes we travel to new places and sometimes we dream about traveling. This past week, my daughter had the opportunity to play the role of Dorothy in the local school play and step into a world “over the rainbow”. That meant that we had to find ruby slippers. Of course, we could have bought them and had them delivered to our front porch but that wasn’t the route we chose to take. Instead, we decided to make our glitter ruby slippers and create some memories along the way. We learned some things and are ready to share how to make your own Glitter Ruby Slippers!

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DIY Ruby Slippers

Materials Needed

• Black Shoes
• Red Glitter
• Alene’s Clear Gel Tacky Glue
• Spray Acrylic Coating
• Red Glitter Ribbon
• Small jewels

Directions

• Cover the shoes with tacky glue.  Use your finger to make sure you coat every piece of the surface with the tacky glue.

You can use whatever glue you prefer, but Alene’s Clear Gel Tacky Glue worked like a charm! It was very sticky, held the glitter in place and dried quickly when we needed to touch up pieces of the ruby slippers after each show.

• Sprinkle red glitter over the entire shoe.
• Shake off the excess glitter.  Catch the excess glitter on newspaper or copy-paper so you can reuse it and not have the glitter go to waste.  
• If there are any bare spots, you can go back over them with another coating of glitter and glue once the first layer dries completely.
• Make a simple ribbon to attach to the toe of the shoes.

• Attach 3 small jewels on the ribbon.
• Spray a coat of clear acrylic spray. Don’t forget to put paper towels in the shoes when you apply the acrylic spray. Repeat as needed.

 

Things we learned:

• Use shoes that are flat and smooth.  You don’t want to use ballet slippers that bend easily.  The glitter and glue will start to flake off after several rehearsals.
• The clear spray will keep most of the glitter from flaking off.  We tried hairspray and it worked but the acrylic spray worked better.
• Ribbon does not work to cover the shoes.  We tried 1/4 inch glitter ribbon but it did not stick to the shoe and showed a line where it connected.  Glitter and glue is definitely the best option.
• If you can find red spray paint glitter, that would work, but it might be quite as shiny as actual glitter.

If you prefer to buy ruby slippers instead of make them, you can do that too!

We were fortunate to have the opportunity to see the original Ruby Slippers in the National Museum of American History before they were taken off display. They are currently under conservation efforts and are not available for public viewing.

Have you ever made ruby slippers? Got any tips?

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