Every time I walked outside in Paris, it felt like I was being cremated, just a little.
I’m a born and bred Californian—I’ve survived Palm Springs in July and have been forced to run the mile in temps of 100+, but not even that could have prepared me for la canicule, the French heatwave that hit Paris just as I was stepping off my Eurostar train from London.
So I did what any good American in search of la clim (air conditioning) would do: I hit the department stores. Merci, Le Bon Marche, and Galeries Lafayette—I did it all, with my trusty shopping guru Sofia by my side. And at the very tip top of Galeries Lafayette, under the glass dome and amongst the piles of les soldes (sale) shoes I saw these winking back at me:
Twinkly toed, beaded, maximalist, jelly shoes, made perfect by Heavenly Jelly. I quickly turned them over in search of a size and a price only to have my joyous bubble burst upon the realization that they would run me a cool €250. I put them back down, slightly bummed, but then almost immediately perked up from the thought that:
1. I had no more room for them in my suitcase and
2. They could become my next DIY designer dupe victim.
This latter thought kept my mind racing and a faint smile on my face throughout the rest of the heat of the day.
Upon my touchdown back in NYC, I scoured the American sales for a pair of lattice jelly shoes that I would not be afraid to adorn with beads, sequins, pearls, charms and the like. I ended up going with this pair from Gap as they were too good a deal to pass up. I debated whether to do the clear or the pink, but ultimately the clear felt like more of a blank canvas to play around with, texturally and color wise.
Before they even arrived in the mail, I was already starting to look for embellishments. I looked at the Heavenly Jelly website for some sparkly inspiration, and was met with a trove of beads and sequins, which I knew I wanted to use to anchor my dupe. The original shoes cleverly affixed all the adornments with what looked like crocs jibbitz, so I found a pack of blank ones from Michaels to use as a starting point. From there I journeyed to the garment district in search of charms, beads, rhinestones, doodads, and the like.
My first stop was Bead Kraft which was a total bust. Their charm selection was mid, and most of their beads were sold in strings rather than packaged individually, which was what I needed. I then headed north to Pacific Trimmings, which is my go-to spot for notions in the city. I found some fun things there like a tiny beaded bag (similar), flower appliqué, and two large rhinestone buttons. However, they did not have trimmings available in increments of less than a yard which was far more than what I needed for this project, so I sought that elsewhere. As I was walking around the garment district, I stumbled upon Daytona Trimmings, and just decided to peek inside at the last second. Here, I ended up finding several sparkly treasures that they sold to me at half a yard each: pearl fringe, beaded trim, and a sequin floral ribbon (all similar).
With my arsenal of magpie attracting items, I headed home. After some snipping of the trimmings and tetris-ing around of the shapes and textures, I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted each of the individual jibbitz to look. Then, I got out my trusty hot glue gun—and yes, this is the technical term for it—started hot gluing shit together.
For this part, I kind of just let my heart lead me where it needed to go. I took some of my snips of trim and layered them with other shiny bits. I glued rhinestones on sequins on pearls. I rolled up stretches of fringed trim to create firework-like bursts of beads that dangled from the jibbitz like jellyfish. Eventually I had covered every single jibbit in something sparkly and gorgeous.
Et voilà! The twinkliest toes you’ll ever see. Though, you can’t really see my toes through all the twinkles…no feet for free, as they say!
As far as DIYs go, this one was a total breeze, especially if you’ve got a magpie’s instinct like I do. A pro tip: The blank jibbitz I got are two sided with different sized sides—If you go with the same flats I did, I’d recommend gluing your accouterment on the smaller side, as lattice of my jelly was a little wider and felt more secure when I poked the jibbitz in the holes using the larger side. I’ve aggregated all the items I used (and some similar ones when I couldn’t find exact matches) for your ease here.
If you make a pair of these sparkly steppers please drop a photo in the comments! I’d love to see how yours turn out.
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