By Guest Blogger Allison from the blog Dream A Little Bigger

Allison’s voice and style shows through with her whimsical home decor creations, crafts to wear projects, craft tips, and more on her blog Dream a Little Bigger.

If there is one thing crafting does, it is make waste. We cut away at fabric, foam and the like to get the shape or area that we need. While sometimes the rest is still useable, it is often trash.

One of the scrap items I have been accumulating are lace scraps. Maybe I cut a piece just shy of the length I actually needed. Maybe decided to go another direction and what I cut went unused. It happens a bunch of different ways and very frequently.

So, I gathered some of my lace scraps along with some pretty lace my Mimmie gave me and glued it onto a pair of canvas sneakers. Now these sneakers I meant to dye beige, but crafting while I am ill means that I grabbed the wrong box and didn’t realize that the water was the wrong color. I think I would prefer if they had been beige (I was hoping that it would appear kind of nude, like the canvas wasn’t even there) but these are pretty awesome, too.

Want to make your own? You will need:

• lace in many patterns
• fabric glue
• scissors
• x-acto knife
• tennies in your choice of color

You can either purchase shoes that are already the color you like, dye a new pair of white ones, or if you have some kind of messed up white tennies you can dye them a medium to dark shade to cover the marks.

Figure out where you want to place your first piece of lace. I put a strip of the largest right over the middle of the toe for big visual impact. Squeeze out some fabric glue and use a qtip or your finger to smooth it out. Place the lace on top and pat down to stick well to the glue.

Continue placing lace with your shoes side by side. Try to mirror the placement as closely as possibly. Continue up making the lace cross over the gap made where the shoe divides for laces. When you get past that area, you can use small scraps to cover the sides. Continue placing your lace until you reach the heel. There place one piece straight up and down.

After the shoes have dried and the glue is fully set, trim around the top of the sneakers to cut the excess lace. Cut the lace down the tongue to separate the two separate sections for the left and right eyelets.

Use the fabric glue to go around and stick any piece that isn’t adhered to the shoes. You can place the glue underneath and tamp the fabric down, or place the glue on top and rub it in.

Use an x-acto knife or a pointy screwdriver to cut out holes for the laces to run through the eyelets. Lace the shoes as you go.

-OR- you can make your tennies laceless by following this tutorial.

That’s all for that! I absolutely love my new kicks… they are comfy but look much dressier than normal tennies. These might even be nice, comfortable shoes for a bride at her reception! Happy Shoesday lace lovers!