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!

This tutorial was featured on totallytutorials.blogspot.com!