QUICK CRAFT: Cinderella’s Glass Slipper (Disney’s Cinderella)

Here’s how I cobbled together a fun replica of Cinderella’s glass slipper using some found items and a bit of sewing.

• 

• 

Animation screencaps – Cinderella

Years and years ago I was at the thrift store and I happened upon a life-size glass slipper paperweight. I was immediately tempted to get it… but I was shopping with a friend and I felt a bit self-conscious about having to explain why I would want to buy this life-size glass slipper. I passed up the paperweight, which of course was long gone the next time I went to the thrift store.

I regretted that decision so much, because as it turns out there aren’t a lot of life-size glass slippers out there! There’s a lot of teeny-tiny glass slipper paperweights, a lot of cheap plastic glass slippers meant as party favours/table decorations… neither of which were appealing to me. I wanted something that could feasibly stand in as a glass slipper!

Disney did come out with some life-size glass slippers, both for the original animated Cinderella and the live-action remake, but these licensed replicas are SUPER expensive (And in the case of the live-action remake, super hard to find, I couldn’t even track down a product photo of it).

• 

• 

There’s also this version of the glass slipper, which you can purchase from ShopDisney and can also get it engraved with a personal message. It’s a nice match to the glass slipper from the animated Cinderella, but again it’s a bit pricey for my tastes and to be frank, the shape of it feels a bit off to me. It’s not wrong, just something about it isn’t super appealing to me.

So after going through a few pages of eBay and finding only the expensive replicas or the teeny-tiny paperweights, I finally came across a listing that looked absolutely perfect. This is a Bohemia crystal glass slipper, originating from Czechoslovakia. I’m not really sure how old it is, it doesn’t appear to be in production anymore so I assume it’s not a recent release. Regardless, it’s absolutely perfect for this project. It’s life-size and has a lovely shape to it, so I purchased it and thankfully it made it’s way to me in one piece.

The only thing I added to the glass slipper was a small glass cabochon heart, to better mimic the slipper in the film. I didn’t want anything permanent so I just used a tiny bit of mod podge to stick the heart to the rest of the shoe. You can easily remove it with not much force, but honestly that’s fine by me. This shoe is just going to sit on my shelf so it doesn’t need anything super sturdy, and I’d rather have to re-glue the heart on every so often than risk permanently marring the glass slipper.

So all that was really left to do was to make a cushion for my new shoe. I purchased some velvet fabric from RalstonFabrics on Etsy to make into a pillow, two different colours to mimic the two-toned look of the cushion from the film.

• 

From each bit of velvet I cut out an 11 by 12 inch rectangle, which I then sewed together (Leaving one end unsewn so that the pillow could be stuffed). For the stuffing I used some dense furniture foam that I’ve had kicking around in my craft supply hoard for some time now. It’s about 3 inches thick and very firm, which I wanted because I was worried a pillow that was too soft would make for an unstable base and risk my glass slipper falling over and breaking. I found a foam rectangle of about 8 by 9 inches fit into my velvet pieces, so I stuffed it in and then sewed up the gap with a ladder stitch.

Then I just needed to sew on some cording and tassels and this craft was done! I kinda feel guilty that the most impressive piece of this project, the glass slipper, was purchased and only slightly modified by me, but I also don’t regret getting it. You just can’t beat the look of real glass and I doubt I would’ve been able to hand sculpt something as lovely as this slipper.

• 

• 

• 

• 

This has now kick-started my desire to do more Disney props, so look forward to that in the future. I’m going to have to start re-watching some of the films I haven’t seen in a long while to see what props jump out at me.

If anyone out there has any suggestions for future Disney props feel free to leave a comment below! I’d love to hear what comes to your minds when you hear “iconic Disney props”. Until next time, thanks for reading!