Ultralight Recycled Camp Shoes

I promised I share how to make some super simple, super cheap, and super lightweight camp shoes.  Recently I was stuck in the house for an afternoon and needed something to fill my time.  Looking around my gear room, my old trusty blue foam pad caught my eye.  Camp Shoes!  Time to grab the scissors...

I've had my blue foam pad since I was a Boy Scout, well over 20 years ago.  I don't know how many nights I've slept on it, but it carried me through the not-so-ultralight backpacking days, strapped faithfully (along with a tent, sleeping bag, wool blanket, ...) to the outside of my external frame backpack.

I've long since replaced my faithful blue foam pad with the next great thing multiple times over, so I thought what better way to honor my old friend than by walking on it.

First, grab a couple of sheets of paper.  You'll probably need 2 unless your feet are really small or your paper is really big.  You'll want to arrange them so that there's plenty of extra paper sticking out all around your foot.  Once you have the paper laid out, tape it together so it doesn't get out of alignment later.

Prepare your template

Yes, I used duct tape... it's all I had on hand.

Next, put your foot down and trace it.  Make sure you trace it "generously"- in other words, hold the pen at least straight up and down, if not angled a bit so it's tracing a little wider than your foot.

Trace your foot

Once you have your foot traced, move your foot and look at the outline you just made.  I wanted my camp shoes to have plenty of space for my foot, so I made the pattern about a half an inch wider than my foot tracing all the way around - just eyeball it.

Next put your foot back down in the middle of the pattern, and figure out where you want the top strap to go.  Draw lines for the top strap perpendicular to the foot tracing, like so:

Add a little margin all the way around, and add wings

Above you can see the lines I drew for the strap.  You can also see how I adjusted the width.  Now you're ready to cut out your paper shoe and see how it fits.  Leave plenty of excess around the "tabs"... we'll figure these out next.

Once cut out, your pattern will look something like this:

Rough cut it out

Notice how goofy the straps are... let's fix that by trying on our new shoes.  Put your foot down where it goes, and wrap the wings around the top of your foot.

Fine tune your pattern

Once you have it about right, trim the pattern so it's more or less how you want it.  Don't worry about the wings for now, in fact err on the side of too long.

Once your pattern is correct, you're ready to trace it on your blue foam pad.

Trace onto your old blue foam pad

You'll need to trace two, obviously, assuming you have two feet.  You'll also want them to be mirror images, unless you have two left feet.  Once both are traced, go ahead and cut them out.  Again, don't worry about the length of the wings (except mae sure that they are at least as long as the paper wings, assuming that the paper wings were long enough to go around your foot).

Cut out a left and a right (mirror images of each other)

My blue foam pad has been rolled up for over 20 years, so not surprisingly it was a little curled.  This is easily corrected by just putting it under something heavy and flat for a while.  When it's nice and flat (an hour or so was plenty for me), you're ready for your final fitting.

Put them down on the floor, center your feet, and wrap the wings up around.  Decide how tight you want them, and then trim the wings so that they'll just touch each other when your foot is where it should be.

Prepare for final fitting

Now, decide how you want to finish your shoes.  I chose a beautiful and stylish black duct tape.  You can probably find a blue duct tape that might almost match the color of the foam.  Whatever you do, don't use the standard grey color.  That would just be too trashy.  We're sophisticated backpackers, remember?

Hold the wings together on the top of your foot and apply a nice long strip of duct tape across the top of the wings.  Voila!  Camp shoes.

Duct tape closed to finish

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