All About Barefoot Sandals

Best Foot Forward

By Susan Kreimer – Excerpted from the July 2006 edition of “Professional Jeweler” Magazine.

Barefoot on the beach? Yes, barefoot…but stepping in style!

This summer, bottomless barefoot sandals with beads galore are making shimmering statements. And fancy foot adornments – oh, those eye-catching ankle bracelets and toe rings – are treading closely in popularity.

On sandy terrains and in urban settings handcrafted foot jewelry has attracted an almost fanatical following. Designers are especially busy this summer stringing together customized combination – just in time for weddings and seasonal celebrations.

Many are new at this line of work; yet skilled enough that repeat orders keep streaming in. “”We’re deep into foot jewelry. It’s all we do,” says Jan Baker, 58, of San Diego, California.

In September 2003 she launched “Jewels by Jan – Beaded Foot Jewelry for all your “barefoot” occasions!” At beach weddings, barefoot sandals are a bride’s best friends. “It’s too hard to walk in sand with any kind of shoes, even flip-flops”, Baker says. What a difference her creations make.

“Your feet are free to wiggle in the sand but they’re decorated with sparkly beads. The sandals are comfortable to wear because the beads are strung on durable elastic cord. You just slip your feet into them; there are no hooks to fasten.”

And if you want to wear something on your soles – from casual to dressy – these so-called sandals are good to go. Although she receives orders year-round, purchases peak around this time.

Each item is handmade by Baker or her younger sister, Pat Jones, who lives in the Des Moines, Iowa area. There’s no mass production of piece after piece. Everything has a touch of originality. Take the order that Baker recently shipped to Hawaii, for example. The bride requested one pair for her wedding, another for her honeymoon, along with hot pink and red beaded sets for her bridesmaids and 4-year-old flower girl. “When I finished designing these particular sandals, I actually saw how pretty the combination of the two colors really was,” says Baker, who is from Iowa.

Another bride exercised distinctly different demands. Intent on donning a rhinestone necklace that’s a family heirloom, she wanted her feet to dazzle just as much. Her wedding wish became Baker’s command.

“We’ve even had men ask us if we plan to design a beach sandal that they could wear,” she says. “Haven’t done that yet but, hey, whatever the customer wants – we try to accomplish it.”

Jan Baker, ever the enterpriser, buys her beads only from U.S. suppliers, not from overseas.

In June, she and her sister geared up to be first-time vendors at a California belly dance event expecting more than 5,000 attendees. Both have day jobs – she’s an Administrative Assistant for a clinical research organization; her sister is a hairdresser with a loyal customer base. “We’re busy making 200 pairs of sandals – the majority of them all different designs,” Baker says, while preparing weeks in advance. “We felt that it would be a good selling point for no two pairs to be the same.”