The story about how I came upon a lot of about twenty old shoe taps involves one of my usual thrifting afternoons. I discovered some old metal prescriptions boxes and knew I had to have them, pricey as they were. When I got home and opened one of them, I discovered some old shoe taps. I imagined who would have taken the time to save these? Was it some proud grandparent who had a ton of tap dancing grandkids and saved the metal tap after the shoes fell apart? My mind runs wild with imagination...
I started making things with the shoes taps and one of the things I came up with was a pendant. When some of my pendants were published in GreenCraft magazine, I began getting inquiries from Etsy customers regarding custom orders. One delightful customer comes to mind. She wanted a pendant to give to her child's dance teacher at the end of the year. I thought this was creative gift giving at it's best.
About the time I set out to create a new shoe tap pendant, a surprise arrived from one of my favorite craft manufacturers, Walnut Hollow. Inside the package? An innovative tool recently introduced by Norma Rapko, sold exclusively at Michaels stores. (now available). The Crystyler is a crystal loading tool that comes in two different sizes to load two different sizes of crystals in a myriad of colors. The object is to be able to load the cyrstals quickly and set them on your project (coated with glue) with a click of your thumb.
To see a complete video and tips on using this new tool, check out this link.
More on how I used this innovative tool when creating my shoe tap pendant a little later...
I painted the shoe tap with DecoArt's Americana Acyrlics in Lamp Black, adding a couple of coats of Duraclear Varnish.
I like the texture of the tap, which the paint covers so I decided to add a light coat of Metallic Lustre in Silver Spark.
After adding a painted distressed circle to the center of the tap, I used Beacons Glass Metal and More to add a coat of glue around the circle with a toothpick.
Adding the stones to the surface of the pendant was super easy with this tool! My old method involved picking the stones up individually with a toothpick! I can see how an entire surface can be blinged up so quickly and easily with the Cystyler.
Moving on, I used silver beading wire to add stones, taking advantage of the pre-drilled holes around the perimeter of the tap.
I finished the whole project by adding the pendant to a pearl string and stamping script text to the center of the pendant.
I have seem some shoe taps being offered for sale on sites like Ebay. Try creating with them, they are really fun and come in all sorts if shapes. I hope you create, I hope you make life beautiful but above all... I hope you dance.
Live Life Creatively,
Melony
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