Vintage Shoe Redo Deux

I'm on a shoe kick lately {lol...shoe kick...get it?}.

A few months back I got a pair of vintage shoes from Moonchild Vintage.  They are a late 70's knock off of Famolares, which were all the rage when I was an impressionable preteen.
Here are the real deals...



One of the great things about being a vintage junkie, is that it affords me the opportunity to hunt down styles that I thought were beyond groovy, but was too young to wear at the time they were fashionable.
Sadly, I have yet to find Famolares in my size {9}.  I did, however, find some Yo Yos.  They are almost, but not quite, a little like Famolares...

I thought I'd do this post on how I deal with vintage shoes as a general rule, using my Yo Yos as an example.  Now Toni at Moonchild always cleans & preps what she sells, so they arrived clean & lovely.  If they hadn't, I'd start by giving 'em a good clean with leather cleaner & polish/patch if necessary.
Next,  I remove the insert.  After all, they are generally worse for wear, & a bit gross in principle if not in fact.  The Yo Yos were in good shape for vintage, but they had lost their cushioning & were curling on the edges.

I took off the laces too, for reasons which will be self explanatory in a tic.  I then replaced the inserts with inexpensive generic non-gellin' pads.  I used the originals as a guide to cut the new pads down to size, then slipped them in, easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy~*
I wanted to replace the laces with ribbon of the same color.  I used the original lace as a guide to cut the ribbon, making sure to cut the ribbon about an inch longer than the laces.

I just love old leather..so buttery soft....sigh...

Anyway.

I laced up the shoe with the ribbon, then trimmed the end pieces-- they will fray a bit when you jam them in the holes, which is why I left the ribbon a bit longer to allow for trimming after lacing.  Here's a handy trick:  use a bit of Mod Podge or white glue on the ends of the ribbon to slow fraying {they will fray a bit over time regardless-- but the cool thing about using ribbon for laces is that it is cheap & easy to replace &/or to change to match an outfit *giggle*}.

And that's all there is to it!  As good, no, better than new!

I adore them, & am looking forward to school starting so I can show 'em off.  That's not the only reason I'm looking forward to getting back to work, but, you know, it does factor in~*

Now its time to go finish cleaning up the basement.  We had a flash flood out this-a-way the other day-- fortunately for us, we did a major clean up of the basement earlier in the summer {our dumpster days}, so nothing valuable was damaged.  Also fortunately, we were able to sweep all the water out the door & it was mostly dry by Monday afternoon.  Today I'm just going to do a little mold prevention.
We were very lucky-- there were several people in our area that suffered major property damage...

Thing 2 jumping in the water in the basement...

The Things were out of school yesterday & are again today because the county school buses were damaged in the rain.  The schools not on a year-round schedule like the Things' were scheduled to start this week, but that has been delayed as well.  & to make it more exciting, they are calling for more rain.

Send dry thoughts~*