This is very much a non-knitting post. Be aware that I’m about to properly nerd out over a craft project and get right into the weeds of detail.
The iconography of the Mighty Boosh has a number of recurring motifs. Among them are little doodled monkey faces, lightning bolts, wonky skulls, and Polo mints. On that last one, you might be more familiar with Life Savers, which are similar but absolutely not the same (and there are trademark disputes to prove it).
The Polo mints in particular seemed important to include. They pop up in loads of places, especially in earlier series where they’re stuck on costumes all over the place. One character, the Hitcher, wears a giant one as an eyepiece, as you can see in the gif above. He describes himself as having solo Polo vision.
Anyway… I didn’t want to put real sweets on my shoes. I feel like that’s how you get ants. Instead I made myself a mould by mixing up some siligum moulding paste, flattening it out, then pressing Polo mints into it.
It worked great! I could possibly have got more depth to them, but generally it was very successful. Then I mixed up some resin with white colouring for original ones – and decided last minute that I’d do some rainbow ones too. It was a bit of a faff, drawing out a couple of millilitres of the white resin at a time to re-colour appropriately, but I really love them.
It seemed correct to include something rainbow. Vince is notoriously open minded about who he might fancy, and who might fancy him. In fact, he takes pride that everyone fancies him. So I wanted a bit of a Pride nod in there.
The white ones didn’t come out right. They were too shiny – not enough definition to the lettering. I painted them white and, while they’re not exact, they look very good, especially if you don’t look at them next to a real one.
The best place to put Polo mints on shoes, in my opinion, is over the eyelets. I did one rainbow and one white, and they’re my favourite part of the project.
I’ll do one more post on the remaining bits and pieces – once again, thanks for joining me in this shoe-based nonsense!
The Crafty Yarnster 