Life Hack: Flats keep slipping off?

Hey guys! It's been a LONG while hasn't it? I will go into more about my long two month absence later on, but first I'd like to talk about a problem that some of you may or may not have encountered. As you can tell from the title, I will be talking about flats that slip off.

I can never seem to take a couple of steps without my flats slipping off sometimes, especially with my flat-forms (pictured above). Thankfully, I came up with a solution for this! All you need are some thin rubber shoe inserts for the balls of your feet and your pair of flats.
NOTE: I think this project only works for shoes that fit your feet pretty well. This may not  work as well if the gap in between the heel of your shoe and your foot is too big. Your heel should touch the heels of your shoes somewhat, or fit normally.

The clear inserts here, have a thickness of about 1mm (1/10th of a centimeter)

I purchased my shoe inserts for $1.50 from Daiso (Japanese dollar store). They were supposed to be for open toed "flip-flop" typed sandals to keep your foot from sliding around in your sandal. This type of insert is ideal for this life-hack, but it's ok if you can't find inserts exactly like these. You can cut a small slit at the top of the inserts you have or you can find, just make sure that they are thin inserts so they don't take up too much space in the back of your shoes.

Place this little corner you've create at the heel of your flats and try them out. Similarly to how some strapless dresses have a rubber strip around the neckline of the dress to keep the dress adhered to your skin to prevent it from falling down, the rubber inserts should help hold your shoe to your heels a little better and keep them from slipping off. That rubber strip that is attached to the neckline of strapless dresses is also what inspired me to come up with this idea.

Another advantage is that you can always reuse them for your other shoes. Just wash the inserts when you feel that they've become too dusty. This is a simple way to save your shoes and keep them functional. I found my flat-forms at a local thrift store in my neighborhood and the person that donated them probably did so because the shoe would just slip off with every step that you would try to take.

I would also advice that if you plan on wearing tights or socks with your flats, the rubber shoe inserts are going tug on your tights and your foot may still slip out. This works best if you go barefoot. I'm not sure if any if that made sense, so you may want to test this out on your own.

I'm not sure if I can categorize this post this a DIY project, so I'll be starting a series of short blog posts titled, "Life Hacks." The general idea of what a "life-hack" is meant to be is when you use different items or techniques in varying ways than they are meant to be used in a more efficient or effective way. I'm terrible at giving concise explanations sometimes, so I apologize if that explanation made no sense at all. With that, this is a series of short blog posts I want to start making in place of some of my usual longer DIY tutorial posts once in a while. These posts will include some of my tips, tricks, and  simple ways that I bypass some of the common problems that I find people encounter in their daily lives from time to time. 

PERSONAL UPDATE:
Before anyone says anything, I know I promised I would try my best to post at least once or twice a month, and I totally failed you guys on that. (Cue the boo-ing) It has been about two months since I last posted, and I apologize for that. I've recently taken up a part time job and I've also been struggling with school work, so I unfortunately have not had the time to write and edit any posts. Until I finish my spring semester, I may not be able to post as frequently until my summer vacation. We'll see how everything pans out.

As always I hope this post was useful to you in some shape or form and please let me know if this "life-hack" worked for you in the comments below! 

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog! ♥

Until next time~

Broke For Christmas: More Holiday Decorations

Hey guys! If you haven't checked out the first of my Christmas themed blogs check out it here. As I had mentioned previously, I said I would cover Christmas wall decorations, so here I am back this week with another Christmas themed home decor post!

DIY Window Stickers

Let’s start with some easy window decorations!

I remembered that when I was a kid, I had this art kit to make these window stickers and I thought trying to find a way to recreate those window stickers for winter would be a good idea.

In this picture is my old, cracking lamp shade that I've had since the 6th grade. I remembered that I had used some glow in the dark fabric paint to paint on some stars. It's been about 7 years and they are still intact and I am still using them. This is what we will be doing for the window stickers today!

All you will need is some fabric paint or 3D glue, a transparent silicone pad or page protectors (basically anything with a smooth surface will work), and some printouts of things you want to stick on your windows.

All you really have to do for this is place your silicon pad over the design you want to trace, trace it over with your paint, and just let it dry….. and then you’re done! 

NOTE: Try to make sure that you pick a design that doesn’t have too many little details and also try to make sure that the lines you are creating with the paint are thick. The window sticker might be more prone to ripping if the lines are too thin. The a piece of blue and white snowflake on the top left had ripped off because I made the lines too thin, so be careful and be gentle with your window stickers.

TIP: If your window sticker does rip, you can fix it by dabbing on a bit of fabric paint onto the ripped parts. The paint will act like a glue and once the paint has dried, the ripped bits should be reattached.

The “Technical” Stuff: Fabric Paint vs. 3D Glue

I’ve tried using fabric paint as well as the Elmer’s 3D paint/glue and I feel that the fabric paint may work as a better window sticker in the long run then the 3D glue. 

Elmer’s 3D paint was a bit harder to control because it was so thick (thicker and stingier than Elmer’s regular school glue) and it took 10x as long to dry then the fabric paint. I had to let the window stickers sit for almost 12 hours for them to dry completely. 

The fabric paint, on the other hand was more fluid and easier to work with. It also dried fairly quickly and they last pretty long as you can tell from my 7 year old lamp with the fabric painted stars. 

I felt that the 3D paint was too thick and more glue like than paint (makes sense because Elmer’s is a glue company) and I’m sure you guys have done this before, but when you leave glue out to dry and it dries completely, it doesn’t stick anymore. The same seems to go for this paint. It does stick on my windows for a little while, but once all the moisture from the 3D paint sticker is completely gone, it doesn’t stick as well anymore. My suggestion would be to apply a small amount of water to the back of the sticker before sticking it back on the window if it isn’t sticky anymore. On the flip side, I don’t ever seem to have this problem with the fabric paint stickers. After trying both, I prefer to use fabric paint, but the choice is yours :)

DIY Wall Christmas Tree

If you’re looking for a way to fill up a naked wall or if you would really like to show some Christmas spirit but don’t have enough much space to spare, then this project is something you should consider. It’s a very easy and space savvy way to bring in some festive decorations into your home to cover up those bare walls.

Here are a few things you will be needing:

All of the optional items I purchased were fairly inexpensive. The circle cutter was $3 from Ross and the mini clothespins and lace were both from Daiso (Japanese dollar store in Japantown) and were priced at $1.50 each item. As you can see from picture above, I have a bunch of circles already pre-cut. This part of the project might be a pain in the butt if you don’t already have a circle cutter, but it shouldn’t be too hard if you stack the papers and cut circles out all at once.

 

Here, you can see that I cut out 55 circles and one star. Lay out all your circles and arrange them into a Christmas tree ahead of time to get an idea of how you might want it to look on your wall. You don’t have to make it look exactly like mine. You can experiment with different shapes and sizes to make your wall tree more interesting.

Did I say that cutting the circles out was a pain in the butt? Maybe this part is a little more tedious. What you’re going to do now is attach each row of circles to a single thread and, using tape, stick them to the wall working from the bottom up. You can choose not to stick them to the thread and just stick each individual circle to your wall. I find that attaching them to a thread makes it easier to create straight rows of circles on the wall. 

TIP: If this is available to you, it might be better if you use painter's tape (a type of masking tape) because it won't leave residue on your walls when you remove it, so no damage will be done to the wall. If you use the clear scotch tape as I have used to tape the circles to the thread, it's more likely that the tape will leave a residue on your walls if you leave the tape on the wall for too long.

Here is the finished product! Although I’m not sure you can even see this, I also taped some lace to act as a garland for the wall tree. The addition of lace is a good way to display all your Christmas cards as shown below!

These projects are great for people who are tight on both money and space. Perfect for college students living in dorms because they don’t damage the walls, take up any space, and they also liven up your room.  Have fun and get creative with your window stickers and wall tree! Let me know in the comments below what you think of these projects and also anything else you may want me to cover.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Until next time!