Inspired by this tutorial I found online I decided to have a go at jazzing up a pair of very cheap, plain flip flops. This is what they looked like before:- I cut up lots of old fabric scraps and machined them together as described in the tutorial, (I found it very traumatic when the instructions called for "messy stitching" as every fibre of my being screamed at me to stitch in nice straight lines, but I persevered!), and used the resultant material to cover the plastic straps and hey presto:-
The whole process took less than 2 hours start to finish and now I think they look like an expensive designer surf brand. I'm so pleased with them I'm thinking of making another pair in a different colour.