Felis Creatibus 365: Halloween costume Shinigami, Arrancar Hallow or Espanda?

What do you want to do for Halloween? Are you dressing up? "Well Mom" she says, " I want to be......." So what part did I hear? LOL. The shoes. And not just any shoes, I did my research. We are going to make Japanese waraji. In case you haven't guessed it from the title we are Bleach fans. (No not the nasty stuff in the bottle, the fun Japanese anime on the net.)

While she is working on her mask (leaning more towards the Espada characters at this point.), I am in charge of wardrobe. Today we tackled the waraji which are traditonal footwear of the soldiers, commoners, and travelers. This is a good article about the waraji. Apparently travelers measured the distance they traveled on long journeys by the number of waraji they used.

Waraji were made of rice straw, but since Home Depot doesn't do rice:

we used sisal rope 1/4" (10' per sandal) and
jute thin stuff (1 pack made 1 pair of shoes but you may need more depending on your foot)
We also bought a scrap plank of wood 4ft x 12" wide x 1" thick for a dollar. For our looms we had the wood cut down to 20" in length. We are 7-7.5 shoe size if that helps you in figuring out what size loom to make. Bonus: the Home Depot guy cuttin my wood was smokin hot! Yummmy.
My own tip here: keep the hammer handy because the nails loosen up quit a bit as a result of the weaving process. And..uh... take the loom off your knees before resetting the nails. Doh!
Total cost per pair of shoes: $7.00. Love it.

There are plenty of tutorials on the web and here are two that we found useful. This one gave directions for a homemade loom:
Make your own cosplay Bleach sandals on Instructables

We found this tutorial good for making the loom and for the actual weaving (easy easy easy to do):
How to make you own sandles for Bleach Cosplay on Youtube. I recommend watching the series (3 vids total) at least once all the way through to pick up on all the great tips she gives.

Here are the pics from our adventure.