How to: Create your own ballet flats with ribbon

I absolutely love ribbons and whenever I go out shopping I always look in the shoe section of any clothing store to see if I can find a pair of ballet flats that have ribbons that tie around your ankles. Unfortunately, my search continues for those perfect pair of shoes. However, this morning I came across a tutorial for making your own. So I went out, bought some ribbon and this is how I did it.

You'll need:

-A pair of ballet flats

-Ribbon

-Scissors

-Needle

-Thread

-Thread picker

-Lighter or clear nail varnish

The shoes that I decided to use were a pair of black flats that I bought in Primark for about £6.You can use any pair of pumps you wish to customise, I just chose a black pair because it's what I had at home.

I bought black ribbon from Range. I paid £2.69 for 5 metres. Again I chose black because it goes with the pumps, however I did debate using white or red ribbon; the ribbon can be whatever colour you desire.

 I took the ribbon and cut it up into four 1m pieces; cutting the ends at an angle. Using a lighter I burned the edges a bit so that the ribbon won't fray; this works well for dark coloured ribbons. For ribbons that are lighter, take clear nail varnish and put that on the end of the ribbon, setting it aside to dry completely. 1m seems like a lot of ribbon but this allows you to cut the ribbon shorter if you wish; it gives you room to experiment. Remember you can always cut off more but you can never put it back.

Taking a needle and some thread I sewed the ribbon from the inside of the flat. I suggest that the colour thread you use is the same, if not similar, to the colour of your pumps as it'll show up less on the underside of the flat. I sewed the ribbon approximately 6cm from the middle of the heel of the flat; you can sew the ribbon where ever you wish to. I would recommend placing the ribbon on the inside of the flat and moving it around, tying it around your ankle just to see how it will look like and make sure you like it. 

 You do this to the other side of the flat so that you have two ribbons parallel to each other; making sure that the distance from the ribbon and the heel is the same as the ribbon on the other side.

Repeat the steps above to the other flat and voilà. You've got your very own ballet shoe style pumps.

This is what my ballet flat look like:

As I said before 1m of ribbon is quite a lot, so play around with the ribbon and only cut some of it off when you're completely happy with it.

Alternatively, you could use a hot glue gun and glue the ribbon to the inside of the flat. I find this very messy and the ribbon may come out at any point. Use which ever method you'd like though!

Total cost: £8.69
This definitely beats paying at least £15 for a pair of shoes.

Enjoy customising your new flats!