New Life, New Goal.

So! For 26 yrs I have been wandering around not knowing what my goal was in life other than to marry a rich guy and live happily ever after. Met a guy of my dream but obviously it didn't work out (Jerks, too many of them!), and I was even more Lost. And when I had nobody to think about, nobody to see, I ended up having more time to think about how to make my ceramic shoes look more realistic. I watched many many videos on shoe making, I have many ideas and I drew them down on my sketch book for later reference. I saw that in the videos shoe makers make shoes with leather - DUH!!!! SO! I decided to let my clay dry under cover for a week, until it gets leather hard. And the nxt time I was at my studio, I was able to use that Leather-Hard clay to cut into slabs, and put together into a shoe like those shoe makers did.


But that didn't fulfill me, something was still Missing. What else can I do? At this point, my ceramics shoes have not been fired or glazed yet, so they are quite boring to look at. Right now, I'm not too worried about glazes, I just wanted to focus on the slab building skills. And then this came into my mind, "why make ceramic shoes, shoes that you can't wear, when you can make a real pair???"  Yep! That's how I came up with my future goal. I have looked at an enormous amount of shoes and designed a few in my sketch book. I originally wanted to go to Europe (London, to be specific) to take a shoe making course, but there is No way I can afford that. Therefore I have been looking and search for another path. I searched for shoe competitions, just to get my name out there, just to get noticed. but I found nothing for Canadians. And I certainly don't want to immigrant to the States just to enter some shoe competitions. There's gotta be another way.


I look around at my work place, there are A lot of shoes in the back room of our shoe department. each style we hold at least 10-20 pairs + they come in different colors, that's 20-30 pairs for one style, one color. And I seriously doubt all the designers Know how to make shoes. For instance, our Jessica Simpsons, and Fergielicious brand, do you seriously think Jessica Simpson and Fergie knows how to design and make the design? I really doubt they had the time to learn all that. So where did their products come from? Someone made it for them :)  I googled some manufacture places, and found some shoe factories! I'm getting closer to where I want to be, I can feel it!


I looked at the web site, this factory that I was looking at, they make shoes for Clarks and Nike... etc. Apparently you can just send them your design and they will make the shoe for you. And what they do is they will make a sample piece, to see if it matches to your design, if you don't like it or if you feel like it needs to be worked on more, they will work WITH you, until both parties are happy with the result. Next procedure will be pricing and shipping, all that can be negotiate. 


I remember what my Ceramics Prof Steve said to our class, if you are a ceramic artist that makes your own clay for your own work, you'll end up being a clay maker rather than an artist. However if you spend a little money on ready-made clay, then you'll have more time to work on your art, and able to produce more work. Same thing goes with shoes, if I'm going to learn how to make shoes, they would be made to view as an art form. But if I were to make shoes for the public, I better get it done by a manufacturer, just spend a little money for production, and I can make it all back in the end. 


I still want to go to school and learn how to make shoes, I want to be able to make a one-of-a-kind pair of shoes and have it view as an art work, something outrageous, something, crazy and wild, something that people would point at it and say "that's art".


Now, that I know what I want in life, and I have resources on how to achieve that goal. All I need is money,  a brand name and a way to sell off those shoes that I'm about to make.  I gotta say, I'm pretty darn excited about it!


Please, for my blog readers, if you have know of any shoe competitions out there, plz plz do let me know! I could really use some help right now!


Thank you for reading my blog, and more pix will be posted soon, once I have more work done.