hi! welcome to make thrift buy, a show whereyou send me pictures of clothing that you've found on the internet, and i try to recreatethem. about 2 weeks ago, jacky owen sent me thispicture of these led light-up shoes, and challenged me to recreate them. and at first, i was totallyskeptical - i thought that you would need a degree in electrical engineering or at leastsome basic knowledge of how electronics work
multi colored womens running shoes, - which i don't have - to be able to recreatethese. but no. no no no! guess what? i then came up with a way of making lightup shoes that doesn’t require any knowledge of electronics, that should actually be reallyeasy…? i think? i mean - i don't want to talk too soon, because i haven't tried itout yet, but i think these are going to work
really well. so - let's begin! i started out by getting myself a pair ofshoes. and i didn’t own any shoes that were appropriatefor this project, but i found these for $10 at the thrift shop… and gave them a littleclean before putting them on my table. for this project, i chose shoes that are hi-topsand have a large tongue. the first thing i did was to measure aroundthe circumference of the shoes. this came out at 25 and a half inches, or65 centimeters, so the lights i get will need to be at least this long. the next thing i did was to find myself some"led strip lights".
these are strips of lights with adhesive backingthat you’re actually, apparently, able to cut up.because i don’t really understand how electronics work, i made sure to get a set that alreadyhad a battery box attached, so i wouldn't have to do any connecting of wires.the strip lights are also waterproof, which i figured would be a good idea seeing as iwant to put them onto shoes. because the lights came in either 50, 100or 150 cm, and the circumference of my shoes is 65cm, i chose the 100cm lights. and i gottwo sets, because i have two shoes. so, when the lights arrived, i checked thatthey worked – each set required 3 double a batteries. awesome!
they also came with this clicker to let mechange modes and colours. so now i just have to figure out the bestway of getting all of this onto these shoes. so the first thing i needed to do was cutthe lights down to the right size. so i looked this up in heaps of places whetheror not you could cut these, and all the websites i found said yes, you can, but – i’m stillterrified about cutting through something with wires in it. so… here goes nothing. oh thank goodness, they didn’t explode.but do they still work?? yesssss. alright! so, on the inside of the shoe, i’mgoing to super glue the clicker down.
so i basically just put a bit of super glueon the back, and i held it down onto the shoe for a couple of minutes. now, the strip lights also have this adhesiveon the back – i just have to peel the backing paper off first.i connect the lights back up to the clicker, and using both the adhesive on the back ofthe lights, and some super glue to make super sure that they’ll stay on, i attach thelights all the way around the base of the shoe. and once that’s done, i need to figure outwhat to do with this battery pack. i thread it up into the shoe like this, andi think that i’m going to make a pouch for the battery pack on the inside of shoe’stongue.
so i grab myself some fabric that’s similarto what the shoe is made out of – this is just some scrap pvc fabric that i had lyingaround. i draw a rectangle around my battery pack,with about an extra inch on each side and cut this out.now i also don’t want the battery pack to be uncomfortable while i’m wearing the shoes,so i’m going to put some batting into the inside of the pouch. i used some fabric glueto stick some folded-up batting onto the back of the pvc material. then i place this bit of fabric onto the insideof the shoe’s tongue. i use to needle and thread to sew it on down the sides like this,and then after making sure that the battery
actually fits inside, i sew the bottom ofthe pouch down like this. and while sewing, i made sure not to stickmy needle all the way through the whole shoe tongue – just through this inside layerof fabric, because i don’t want the stitches to be visible from the outside of the shoe. i then make a little closing for the pouchwith another small rectangle of pvc – which i attach like this.and then i glue on some velcro strips so that the pouch can open and close like this.now, i just need to make this wire here a little bit less visible.so basically what i do is to cut out another strip of black pvc, wrap it around the wire,and glue it down onto the shoe, again using
my good friend superglue. so – do the shoes work? [loud dubstep music] [grocery store sounds and shopping centremusic] "hmmm, beans..." [loud dubstep music resumes] so - my conclusion is a definite: make![scissor snipping sound effect] if you want light-up shoes, make these foryourself because it's actually really easy and pretty cheap to do.
[dubstep music resumes] okay, so i just want to add a little addendumto this video. so i made these shoes about a week ago now and, um, i kinda wanted toroad test them and see how they lasted. and i've worn them a few times and unfortunately,while it's all good around here, the lights stopped working here.and i've figured out it's actually because of how my foot bends when i walk, it's actuallykind of torn the connector between the led lights here, and it's just with this shoe- the other one is still totally fine. so, these are actually just too cool, andi need to buy more [lights] and fix this - i know how i can fix this but it is going torequire me buying more lights. but, if you
are going to try this out, what i'm goingto be doing is just placing this strip of lights more strategically around the shoeso that the bit that joins the different led light sections isn't where my foot is goingto be bending. or use shoes like flatforms
(creepers) whose soles won't bend at all.so i hope that's a helpful tip if you do try these out yourself.and if you do try this out then hashtag with #diyannika - because i'd absolutely love tosee how you go! give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyedit, and i'll see you all next time. bye!
