Monday, March 12, 2012

Bohemian Sandals- From K-Cup Filters (DIY)

The Keurig coffee maker is my best friend.  
We get together several times a day to make coffee, tea and instant oatmeal.

EDIT - Several people mentioned that Starbucks cups no longer have this plastic grid inside.  If you discover a brand that does, please let us know so we can update the post with where to find them

Although I am all about the convenience, I hate how terrible those little plastic cups are to the environment.  I use tea bags and a reusable coffee cup most of the time, but I'm still guilty of buying the single use cups on occasion.  Since I can't bear to throw anything away, my stash of used cups has been growing until I finally came up with a project for them: the decorations on these sandals are made from K-Cup filters!  Here's how to make your own K-Cup bohemian sandals:

You will need:
a pair of thong sandals (mine are from Goodwill)
2 filters from used K-Cups
embroidery floss
2 glass stones
acrylic paint or nail polish
hot glue






Start by digging the filters out of two used K-cups.  Not all cups have the filter inside, you might have to try a few types.  My filters came out of Starbucks cups.






Paint them with the acrylic paint or nail polish.  I chose black to go with the black straps on my sandals, but I would love to paint them with silver or gold nail polish next time.






Loop the embroidery thread through the holes with a needle, wrapping both the inner and outer edge.  Once your edges are covered, choose different colors to sew through the holes in the middle.






Turn your filter upside down so that it sits like a bowl on the table.  This will be the back of your decoration.  Make a small ring of hot glue around the edge of the glass stone and press it into the filter.  Because my sandals are black, the translucent stone looked black against the straps.  To brighten up the stone, I painted the back of it white with acrylic paint.



There are two ways that you can attach the decoration to your shoe. One is just to hot glue it to the center of the Y-shaped strap area.  The second way is to glue three segments of string to the back of the filter, tie it onto the sandal and cut off the excess string.  I recommend this if you are finicky like me and might want to swap them out with other decorations later.



Wear your sandals often and love the environment!


Totally Tutorials Blog

This tutorial was featured on totallytutorials.blogspot.com!






11 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I love this! I'm getting a Keurig for my birthday and will be primarilly using the reusable filter cup and grinding my own coffee... However, I'm sure I won't be able to resist buying k cups sometimes! I can see this working for pendants and earrings! Great reuse idea!

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  3. Wonderful. I don't use these filters but you could almost sell them as a craft supply as you can make such wonderful things with them.

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  4. Very creative! Can see this idea being used for Christmas tree decorations, too.

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  5. I tore mine apart and didn't find this screen in it. I just found a thing like a tea bag.

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    1. Thank you for the heads up, I mainly use reusable cups now and haven't purchased K cups in a while, I will update the post.

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    2. the filter is usually under the tea-bag like paper

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  6. I use Starbucks breakfast blend and they do have the plastic filter under the paper filter.
    I’m glad I found this post. I usually dig out all the grounds and paper filter for my composter and use the cups for various crafts, but I was never sure what to do with these plastic filters!

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    1. I am so happy that you have a way to repurpose them now! I hate throwing anything away - especially a good potential craft supply!

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  7. Peet's coffee has the plastic filters in their cups.

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  8. Looking Beautiful!

    You have given the awesome look of your sandals. I share the post to my wife to make her Jesus sandals more cool.

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