Fashion Doll Shoes

Unfinished projects

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Wed, 15 May 2013 07:27:00 +0000

I've been doing some cleaning and there are a lot of unfinished projects, some of which may never be finished. I decided to collect some of them to this post.

First, a pair of Barbie stilettos, which were bright pink to start with. I painted them black using acrylic paint and then added sealer to prevent the paint from chipping. These are unfinished, because I haven't figured out what kind of straps to use and how to attach them.

Next, a pair of plaster castings for Monster High dolls. The first stage was making a master using balsa wood.

Here's the sanded and painted master with another one made of modeling clay.

Making the latex mould. If you want something else than a wedge sole with this technique, the easiest option is to make the back of the heel straight, so the opening can be placed there.

A pair of plaster soles right out of the mould.

Here after a few coats of paint. And that's how far this project has come.

Then another Monster High repaint. The next stage will be painting the round studs, but I've been postponing that, because I know how hard it will be with eyesight like mine.

The final one is an experiment with shrinking plastic. It's a thin sheet of plastic (white, opaque or transparent), which shrinks and hardens when you bake it in the oven. The first picture shows the piece I made to get the right measurements. The scale drawn in the piece of plastic was originally 3 cm long.

When you bake the pieces, they first curl and then straighten back. The result is flat, if the oven temperature is just right.

I used the plastic sheets to make the same kind of heels as in the shoes made entirely of cardboard. Far right is the pattern in the correct size, far left the pattern enlarged to take the shrinking into consideration, and in the middle is the baked plastic heel.

Here you can see the difference in thickness. The upper piece I'm holding is an unbaked sheet and the lower one is a baked piece.

I have also made the straight parts of soles for these and glued the heels into them, but that's where this project has stopped, at least for now. The next stage would be to make the inner soles, probably out of cardboard as usual.

Shoes for a Living Dead Doll

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:34:00 +0000

The Living Dead Dolls have flat feet, so quite a lot of faking is necessary to make something with even a small heel. Here are soles consisting of two layers of cardboard, leather insole, toe part made of air-drying clay (with a little piece of leather preventing the foot from touching the colored clay), and a thick layer of cork.

The toe part of the upper is the first to be glued in place. The clay part helps stretching the leather tightly to prevent creases.

Here you can see the idea. The thick part made of cork makes it possible to make heels for the shoes, and this sort of faking also helps in making shoes that are more in scale with the doll (the doll's feet are much too short compared to the doll's height).

The rest of the upper goes in place next.

This part isn't necessary as you could just glue the outer soles in place and make stacked heels, but I wanted to try something different. So, I took pieces of the leather I used for the uppers, cut outer soles that were slightly larger than what I would have used normally, and glued them in place.

Then I sewed stitches all around, giving the impression that the soles were stitched in place.

Here's a closer look of the stitches.

After stitching, I trimmed the edges, glued the outer soles in place, trimmed those as well, and made stacked heels using the same leather as for the outer soles. Finally, I made the holes for laces and made laces using the same thread I used for stitching.

The shoes go on and off without opening the laces, so I put a little glue to the knots to prevent them from opening.

Boots with lining

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:33:00 +0000

The fabric I wanted to use for boots turned out to stain. Fortunately, I was using an extra pair of legs from a Create a Monster set, so it didn't ruin a doll. As I was set on using that fabric, I decided to try making lining for the boots. I wanted it to be as thin as possible, but still stretchy, so I used a piece of the stretchy lace fabric I used alone for an earlier pair of boots.

First I sewed the top seam, joining the outer fabric and lining.

Then I folded the pieces lengthwise and sewed the back seams.

After that, I turned the outer parts the right side out.

The top needs to be adjusted so that the lining does not show, but remains the fabric that will be against the doll's leg.

Then I glued the uppers to the insoles made of leather and cardboard as usual.

I made the heels from pieces of wood, which I covered using the same fabric.

Here are the finished boots on a doll. She's sitting, because unfortunately, the heels turned out to be slightly wrong length and the doll cannot stand when wearing the boots. As you can see, the top of the back seam has a fairly big bulge, because the fabric is folded both vertically and horizontally there. As this was the first pair I made using this technique, I didn't try to do anything about that, but it needs to be addressed, if I decide to try making another pair.

Black and white Monster High boots

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 13:05:00 +0000

I've been perfecting my boot making techniques. These are based on the boots described in an earlier blog post, so I will only explain the improvements I made.

The first boots are made of thin, stretchy lace, so I used slightly thicker fabric treated with sealer to form the heel and toe parts.

Here are the lace parts with the back seams sewn. Note that I folded the top of the fabric to make the edge neater. The fold looks OK with fabric this thin. I glued the back seam to the fabric at the heel to make sure it keeps in the correct place.

Here all the gluing is done. I left the toe parts last and glued the lace into the thicker fabric as the boots look better that way. PVA glue is transparent when it dries, so you can't see it. The outer soles at the bottom of the picture are made of leather.

The heels are made of wood, and I painted the heels and soles with off-white acrylic paint. I was only going to paint the heels, but the sides of the outer soles looked too dark compared to the fabric, so I ended up painting everything.

The other pair is made of using the same fabric as in the earlier blog post. I only used sealer treated fabric for the toe parts in these. Thicker fabric like this does not require additional support, if you're making the toe part round. However, a pointed one, like in these, requires additional support to keep its shape. I also made these thigh-high instead of just knee-high.

The boots with soles glued in place. I glued the upper fabric to the support fabric also in these. That required being careful with the glue, so it wouldn't seep through as that would have been clearly visible on matte fabric.

The outer soles are again made of leather and the heels are made of round pieces of wood (if you're lucky, you can find stuff in crafts shops that only require cutting into length and painting, like in this case).

Front view of the boots.

Cork soles for Nefera

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:26:00 +0000

I decided to finally use the card-woven band I made for Nefera's shoes, shown in this first photo:

For the soles, I wanted to use something that requires similar amount of effort, and also something that made it possible to glue the straps to the sides of the soles, so I made the soles out of cork. You can find details about how to do that in an earlier blog post.

I treated the band with sealer, so it could be cut at any place without the ends fraying. However, that made the band very stiff, so gluing the straps required applying more pressure than usual.

Here are the shoes with the strap that goes behind the ankle not yet glued to the sole.

All straps glued in place and buttons attached for closing the ankle strap.

Unfortunately, closing the ankle straps left a gap. If I had used rubber bands for the loops, this could have been prevented, but rubber deteriorates, so I used cotton yarn. I had to shorten the ankle straps a bit, because they were so stiff that I had to avoid any overlapping. I'm considering moving the buttons back a bit to close that gap, but for now, the shoes are finished.

Another view of the finished shoes.

Bratzillaz vs. Monster High feet

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:13:00 +0000

Bratzillaz dolls have actual feet, unlike Bratz dolls, and of course those feet are different size from any other doll. Monster High dolls come closest, but the arch in their feet is longer. Bratzillaz foot is also wider.

The photo shows from left to right: Bratzillaz, regular Monster High, Nefera.

New patterns

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 10:26:00 +0000

Patterns for Monster High shoes and soles described in recent blog posts are now available on my web site.

More experiments with polymer clay

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:20:00 +0000

I was wondering if I could make something like the modified plastic castings in the previous post, but use polymer clay. I made a similar mold (only taller) using cardboard and cut pieces from the sides, so I could cut the clay after filling the mold.

Then I covered those openings with pieces of cardboard attached with adhesive tape. This helps in filling the mold.

When the mold was full, I removed those extra pieces.

Then I cut along the edges of the openings. That wasn't easy as the clay was a bit too soft even after a few hours in a fridge. Soft clay is easier when filling the mold, but makes cutting more difficult. The surfaces required some work after cutting to make them even.

Here are the soles after baking and removing the molds. I'm not quite happy with the shape, so I think these will have to be cut and sanded quite a bit. Still, I've got two soles of similar shape and size to work with, which is more than I could do without using molds.

Plastic castings

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:08:00 +0000

I decided to make soles for Monster High shoes using the plastic that is melted by heating (more details here). First I made simple wedge soles. I started by cutting the parts of the molds from thin copper sheet lined with packing tape.

Then I used pieces of the same tape to assemble the molds.

Here are the molds filled with hot plastic and waiting to cool down. The molds are attached to a piece of wood with double-sided tape to make sure they stay in correct position.

And here are the finished soles. This pale yellow is the original color of the E-Z Water plastic pellets.

Then I decided to experiment a bit and made molds for soles with separate heels for Nefera. I just modified the pattern I used for the polymer clay soles.

I was actually quite surprised to see that this worked. If it hadn't, I would have just returned the pieces to the melting pot for re-use. These soles are slightly darker than the previous ones, because I was running out of plastic and had to add a previously slightly overheated batch into the pot. Overheating makes the plastic get darker (and serious overheating makes it smoke and smell bad). The correct temperature to use is the lowest in which you can get the plastic to melt. My stove has a scale of 0 to 12 and setting 5 is just right for this.

Wedge soles using polymer clay

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 07:32:00 +0000

I decided to try, if the method I've been using for heels would also work with wedge soles. I have previously made this kind of soles using E-Z Water plastic that needs to be melted. With the plastic, I used a metal mold, but as polymer clay needs to be baked in the oven, I used cardboard for these.

I started by making a pattern. These soles are for Nefera, so I had to start from scratch.

Previously, I have made the back of the heel curved, but this time, I decided to try angles.

When using metal, the insoles are attached with adhesive tape, but as these molds will go into the oven, plastic isn't an option. So, I cut flaps all around the insoles, except at the back, where there needs to be a hole in the mold. The flaps need to be narrow, so the curves will come out nicely.

The next picture shows how to glue the insoles in place. This can be a bit messy with glue spreading all over your finger tips, but fortunately, only the inside of the mold needs to stay neat.

Then it was time to test that the arch of the foot is correct. The additional piece of cardboard on the side of the mold is there to fix a small hole (that particular angle is a bit tricky and if you're not careful, there will be a hole there). Note the hole on top, behind the doll's heel. That hole is there to help you see when the mold is full. When pressing the clay into the mold, only stop when it starts coming out of that hole. Remove any excess before baking the soles.

Here are the molds filled with polymer clay and ready for baking. At this stage, you should check that the bottom is even and that the soles do not lean left or right. Check also that the insole does not bulge. It is easier to fix that at this stage, but you can fix it also after baking, just use a craft knife and cut off any excess.

Finished heels after baking.

More plastic

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 06:47:00 +0000

I decided to try the transparent plastic in Piggy's shoes. As usual, first I needed the insoles.

I glued fabric on them.

And turned the edges under the soles.

I'm usually not particular about the placement of patterns in insoles, but this time I made sure the they would be identical.

Then I cut wide straps from plastic, added strips of stickers, and applied glossy sealer to stop the stickers from falling off.

I made holes at the end of the straps as before and used double-sided tape to keep the straps in place before gluing.

I used one pair of the polymer clay heels just made. I applied one coat of glossy sealer, let it dry, added stickers, and then applied more sealer. The purpose of the first coat of sealer was to make the surface less porous and help the stickers stay in place.

I actually applied the last coat of sealer after assembling the shoes and hung the shoes to dry. The result is always neater, if you can apply the sealer to all necessary surfaces (sides, back, front, bottom) at once, but that means you need to figure out a way to place the heels/shoes to dry in a way that the wet surfaces won't touch anything.

Here are the shoes on 16" Miss Piggy.

For the previous post on using transparent plastic, see here.

Making modeling clay heels

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 09:30:00 +0000

My main problem with modeling clay is that I cannot make two identical pieces without a pattern or mold. So, I have solved the problem of making heels by using a cardboard mold.

This time I was making heels for 16" Miss Piggy's shoes. The photo below shows the cardboard insole with an empty mold for the heel.

The hardest part is making the pattern for the mold. You can see the basic form below, but it is very much trial and error. Once you've got the pattern right, draw the required number of them on cardboard, fold the front parts as shown, and cut out the pieces. You can make the folds after cutting, but I find this order easier.

Curve the back and sides of the heels using a suitable round object, for example, a marker pen.Then glue the front as shown. The result is the neatest, if the lower flap (the one that goes inside, against the modeling clay) covers the entire width of the heel front. If it doesn't, you'll get a visible seam in the modeling clay (see the last photo of this blog post).

When the glue is dry, pack the molds full of modeling clay. Press it tightly to avoid any gaps, but be careful, so you won't crush the mold. When the mold is full, use a craft knife to cut off any modeling clay that exceeds the top or bottom of the mold, and make sure the form of the heel is the way you want it.

Bake the heels in the oven according to the instructions given in the packaging of the modeling clay you're using. After getting them out of the oven, remove the cardboard immediately (as soon as you can handle the hot pieces). If you let the pieces cool down, the cardboard will be a lot harder to remove. If you're going to cover the heels with fabric, leather, etc., you can also leave the cardboard in place (especially, if you have used leftover pieces of clay of various colors and want to make sure that won't show through the material used for covering the heels).

Here are the finished heels for Miss Piggy.

The top of the heel may be convex even when you have cut it before baking. If that is the case, just use a craft knife to remove any extra material. This has the added benefit that glue will hold better, if the surface is cut or sanded after baking.

Copying a real-life design

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 07:52:00 +0000

Some months ago, I saw an interesting design at a shoe store. I took a photo as I knew I'd want to try making these in doll size.

The first version is for Monster High dolls. I'm thinking of trying them for a bigger doll as well, because of the potential for better details.

I started by making the patterns. The pattern for the upper looks so strange that I actually had to write in it which way the sides are supposed to go. Next, I made the cardboard insoles.

Usually, I make the closing mechanism last, but this time, the shape of the upper made it really hard to get it to stay in the correct position for gluing, so I had to get it closed before gluing. It's a simple bead and hole mechanism again. That's easy to make and works really well with leather.

With that problem solved, I manage to glue the uppers in place (after gluing pieces of leather on top of the cardboard insoles).

Then I glued the straps to the uppers. The straps are from a card-woven band I used for another pair previously. I really wanted to have more straps, like in the shoes I photographed at the store, but the band was too wide for that.

Then I glued the straps under the insoles.

Because the materials used were quite thick, I decided to fill the gaps with leftover pieces to ensure that the outer soles would be even.

For the toe parts, I glued oversized pieces and trimmed them after the glue was dry.

Then I glued the outer soles in place.

I made the heels from round strips of wood, which I glued in place and painted brown. You can also paint first and glue afterwards, but when you glue the heels in place first, you can hold the entire shoe when painting, paint the entire heels at once, and it is easy to put them to dry so that the heels won't touch anything.

Here are the finished shoes on Clawdeen.

Transparent plastic

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 06:44:00 +0000

This was my first attempt of using transparent plastic for doll shoes. These are for Monster High dolls.

The plastic needs to be that soft and pliable, slightly stretchy variant. The piece I used was from a protective cover of a calendar, I think. The Create a Monster legs can be very handy for making shoes for the dolls, because they are easier to handle than the entire doll and more durable than plaster castings. The rows of pearls are sticker strips, which are easier to handle than separate stickers.

I started by making patterns for the required parts.

Then I made the insoles from two layers of cardboard and glued fabric on top.

This photo shows one finished insole and the other one waiting for some more gluing.

Cutting the upper pieces from plastic was a bit tricky as the patterns kept slipping from the plastic. I finally managed to cut all parts, but photographing them was the next challenge.

I didn't want totally transparent uppers, so I glued some pearls to the pieces.

Then I applied sealer to make sure the stickers won't fall off. Here are the pieces waiting for the sealer to dry.

When the pieces were dry, I used some double-sided adhesive tape to attach the ankle strap bottoms to each other. Then I made a hole to the part where they overlap. The toe straps also got tape and holes for the reason explained below.

Although double-sided tape is quite good at keeping the plastic pieces in place temporarily while you haven't glued the outer sole in place yet, I didn't trust it to be a permanent solution. That is why I made the holes in the plastic pieces. The holes need to go through the plastic and any tape there might be, so that when you glue the outer sole in place, it and the cardboard sole will be glued directly to each other in the places where the holes are. These "plugs" will stop the plastic pieces from sliding anywhere, especially as the outer sole and cardboard sole will be glued to each other on both sides of the plastic pieces. So, the plastic is locked in the correct position and cannot move anywhere.

For closing the ankle strap, I attached a small bead to the other side and made a hole to the end of the strap going across the ankle. I used transparent thread for the bead and secured the knot with glue.

This is the construction after gluing the outer soles in place.

My uncle left a big stash of wooden cigarrette holders and I've been finding various uses for them. This time I decided to try using them for heels.

I sawed and cut them to a suitable shape and used cardboard to close all openings. Before gluing the top shut, I actually filled the heels with sand to help them keep their shape.

Then I glued the heels in place and painted them.

Here are the shoes on my custom Create a Monster doll "Bee."

Shoes for 16" Miss Piggy

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 09:07:00 +0000

The basis for these shoes were plaster castings I had made some time ago. I glued the platform toe parts to cardboard soles that had 3 layers of cardboard glued in shape.

Next, I covered the sides of the toe parts with leather and filled gaps with leftover pieces to make sure that the outer soles would stay even when glued in place.

Then I covered the plaster casting heels with leather and glued them in place. Usually the heels are the last part to be glued, but I wanted to try a different method this time.

Then I covered with leather the edges that still had cardboard visible. The metal strip you can see in the photo is there to provide extra support to keep the arch in correct form. I don't use that a lot, but Piggy weighs more than smaller dolls, so some additional strength is a good idea.

For the closing mechanism I decided to try hook and eye, which turned out to be a bad idea as you can see later.

The straps are made of leather and the decorations are actually sticker strips with transparent background. Those are really easy to use for something like this. I covered the strips with glossy sealer just to be sure that nothing will fall off later.

The insoles are made of cardboard and covered with leather leaving some extra around the edges. I cut off the extra where the straps went, but in other places I turned it under the soles.

Here you can see the insoles with some sections already turned under.

The problem with hook and eye was that the end of the strap pointed to the side instead of going along the side of the foot. As I had already glued the pieces in place, I decided to fix this by cutting the hooks, pressing them flat and gluing the straps to the leather strips that held the hooks. So the result is no closing mechanism at all, but fortunately Miss Piggy's feet are different from most other dolls' feet and even shoes with fixed straps placed this high will be fine.

Finally, here are the finished shoes. The outer soles are finished with pieces of dark brown leather.

Shoes for Alvin Ailey Barbie

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:05:00 +0000

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Barbie has pointed toe feet, so very few Barbie shoes fit. I decided to try making shoes for her, although Barbie feet are a bit too small to my taste.

The first step was to make the insoles out of cardboard. As you can see here, I made a toe part for the sole, although it would be left empty. The shoes need to have closed toe to disguise this.

Next, I glued pieces of leather there, so the toe part would keep its form.

Here you can see the pieces in place. I could have printed the texts directly to the cardboard I used for insoles as it would have been neater than gluing separate texts in place, but as this was the first try, I didn't bother.

I used narrow strips of decorative band for the uppers. Using several narrow strips helps getting the correct form as they can overlap, if needed.

Here one half of the upper is ready and the other needs to be glued in place next.

I made the ankle straps using rubber bands the same way I used them for Barbie shoes once before.

Here are the finished shoes from front and side. The heels are made of round pieces of wood cut to a 45 degree angle on the other end and painted white. The outer soles are made of leather.

I'm not quite happy with the result, but for a first try, it is good enough. Also, I learned a few things that should be done a bit differently, so I will probably try another pair at a later date.

Ankle boots made of leather

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Mon, 21 May 2012 06:09:00 +0000

These are similar to the white ankle boots I made earlier. The main difference is the material, which was leather this time. That meant that I could glue the seams instead of sewing.

I had lost the PDF file with the text I use in the insoles, so instead of trying to recreate that I decided to scan and use my own text (the original used a font available in Word 2007, but I had forgotten its name).

This photo shows the boot's upper part finished. Only the outer sole and heel are missing.

Here are the finished boots on Ghoulia. This method of buttoning the boots works very well, so I'm sure I will apply it to some other designs as well.

Repainted Draculaura's boots

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Sat, 19 May 2012 17:05:00 +0000

It's been some time since my last post. I have mostly unfinished projects at the moment, but also a couple of finished ones, first one of which is this (these have been finished for some time, I just haven't posted the photos here).

As I bought two Draculauras, I had two pairs of her boots and decided to paint one pair. The first picture shows the boots with several coats of the basic color. Covering that bright pink requires a lot of coats when using a light color.

Next, some details in place.

The colors used so far are these.

The blue used for the strap is my own mix left over from a dollhouse project.

The finished boots sealed with satin sealer. It seems to be working well as I have put these on the doll's feet and taken them off several times without any problems. Same with the pair I repainted earlier.

Another pair of ankle boots

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:32:00 +0000

I wanted to make a white pair of ankle boots for Spectra the same way I made greyscale Ghoulia's boots. The photo below shows a closeup of the material I planned to use. It's half fabric, half some sort of plastic.

Here are the main parts for the boots with the plastic side (outside) facing up.

I used these scissors for cutting some edges. As these are actually meant for cutting cardboard, they were not sharp enough for soft plastic and I had to finish the cutting with regular scissors.

I tried gluing the back seams, but that didn't hold, so I decided to sew them.

I also sewed the front seam. As the fabric side was inside, gluing the uppers in place was not a problem.

This time I glued the toe part in place at this point, which actually turned out to be the better way to do it.

Then I made the button holes.

The heels are made of wood again, but I decided to paint them, because the plastic material was too thick for covering them.

Then I sewed the buttons in place the same way as previously, glued the heels in place, and glued pieces of leather as outer soles.

Here are some photos of the finished shoes.

Greyscale Ghoulia's ankle boots

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:35:00 +0000

The customized Ghoulia still needs an outfit and I decided to start with her shoes. As I'm thinking of making her an old-fashioned dress, I searched for old shoes designs and found this in one of my books about shoes. The only problem is the height of the heels. The old techniques for making shoes had limitations in that respect, but Ghoulia has high heel feet, so I had to sacrifice some authenticity.

Here are the parts for the shoes. They are all leather, except the two layers of cardboard under the insoles. The patterns for these were a bit trickier to make than normally and I started with discarded pieces of fabric, so I wouldn't waste any leather. The toe part is separate, because it would be hard to handle a seam going lengthwise there.

Next, I glued the front seams.

And then the back seam.

Because of the seams, it was important to position the uppers just right. To do this, you need to glue the flap at the back seam first and then a couple of places in the toe part. This keeps the upper in correct place while gluing the rest.

Then I made holes for the buttons in the flap and sewed the buttons to the other side. You need to make the holes first, put the shoe on the doll's foot, place the flap where it should be when the shoe is closed and then use a pen to mark the places for the buttons. The holes are the smallest my tool could make, probably 2 mm (or slightly smaller as I use that size when inserting 2 mm eyelets to leather and it's a bit tight). I used small beads as buttons and they suit the purpose well.

I made the heels the same way as the heels for Draculaura's boots, glued them in place and glued pieces of leather as outer soles.

Platform sandals for Miss Piggy

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:12:00 +0000

As I was looking through some fashion magazines from this year and cutting shoe pictures for later reference, I got several new ideas. One of them came from this picture of a Prada shoe. I rarely make replicas, so the basic construction is from this, but I used black leather and the fabric I used for Monster High doll shoes earlier.

I started by cutting the toe parts from cork. I used leftover pieces from the cork board I used for the dollhouse front wall, so it was too coarse to be used as such, but was fine for this as it was going to be covered in thick leather. The heels are cut from a round wooden stick. Getting the right angle on the top was tricky as a mitre box is meant for cutting in 45 degree angle, which would have been too steep. So, I had to keep the piece of wood in angle in the mitre box during sawing.

I covered the pieces with leather. The pieces of leather in the top and bottom of the cork parts are there to help keep the soles even.

The insoles have two layers of cardboard and one of leather. The outer soles have three layers of cardboard with leather strips glued to the sides and leftover pieces glued to the top and bottom. The cardboard in the insoles will take care of small unevenness, but without the leftover pieces in the middle of the outer soles, the center part of the insoles would be lower than the edges when the soles are glued together.

The straps are glued in place here. They consist of leather strips covered with fabric (the fabric was too thin to use alone). The leather parts do not go under the insoles, just the fabric. Leather is too thick and would make the insoles bumpy.

Here are the parts so far. The parts that go behind the heel are made of leather and one layer of cardboard. The reason for using cardboard is that it keeps the parts in correct shape when you glue the fabric in place.

Next, I glued the cork parts to the outer soles and covered the heel parts with fabric. The light colored leather pieces shown beside them are the innermost pieces that will cover the flaps of glued fabric.

This closeup shows the construction better. The ankle straps are also in place here and so are the beads that will be used for closing them. The ends of the straps and the thread used to attach the beads will all be hidden under the leather pieces.

Here is the upper part of the right shoe almost finished.

The same in a side view after gluing the outer sole in place.

The loops for closing the ankle straps are made of thin rubber band and glued in place.

Almost finished. The parts in the middle are the leather pieces to be glued on the bottom of the outer soles to cover them.

The final step was to glue the heels in place. Here are the finished shoes.

And finally, the shoes on Miss Piggy's feet.

Booties for Jessica Rabbit

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:39:00 +0000

I started these over a year ago and managed to finish the cork soles, but then abandoned the project for something else. As I was going through some shoe pictures in fashion magazines, I got inspiration to finish these.

The soles consist of four parts each, the bottom and three vertical parts that form the wedge heel. When cutting the vertical parts, it's best to get the arch correct right from the start. Everything else is easy to carve into the right shape afterwards.

Here the heels are glued in place, but not yet carved into correct shape. Also, the bottom parts are a bit too long, but they were left that way on purpose, so it would be easy to get seamless fit with the wedges.

Here are the finished soles. As there won't be anything to cover the cork surface, it is important to get the seams as invisible as possible.

As I continued the project today, I first made the leather insoles. There was no need to use cardboard as the uppers were not going to go under the insoles.

I glued the edges of the uppers to the cork. Basically, you could finish the process here and use the shoes like this. However, I wanted something a bit different this time.

These are the parts that go around the ankles. I used 2 mm eylets and glued pieces of leather to the inside to protect the doll's feet from scratches.

Here are the ankle parts glued in place.

Then I hammered tiny nails to the edges of uppers. These are not necessary, because glue keeps the uppers in place, but I added them for decoration. You need to be careful to get the nails straight or they will come out through the insole or bottom of the cork sole. The shorter the nails are, the better.

Next, I glued pieces of leather to the bottom of the soles and made laces using cotton yarn. The beads in the ends of the laces are for decoration and also to keep the ends hanging down (that looks so much neater).

Repainted Clawdeen Wolf's boots

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:26:00 +0000

I bought another Clawdeen Wolf doll similar to the one I already had, so I decided to paint her shoes as I don't need two identical pairs.

First I painted all the outside surfaces white and the soles brown.

Here are the paints I used for the boots. The only one missing is "EU 658 Antique Gold," which I used for the buckles.

At this point, there were several layers of white underneath and several layers of Turner's Yellow on the straps.

I prefer not to paint parts that touch the doll's feet, but I had to paint part of the insole as it will remain visible. The sealer should prevent any staining or rubbing off of the paint.

Here are the finished boots (covered with sealer) in Clawdeen's feet. The originals are also shown for comparison.

New pattern

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 05:04:00 +0000

The pattern for the Monster High boots in the previous post is now available on my web site.

Stretchy boots for Monster High dolls

noreply@blogger.com (Tarja) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:08:00 +0000

Monster High dolls' legs are so thin that boots with zippers or laces would be hard to make, so I decided to try stretchy fabric instead.

After cutting the pieces, I sewed the back seam and made the soles (two layers of cardboard plus leather insole).

Then I put the uppers on the doll's feet, put the soles in place, and trimmed, turned and glued the uppers under the soles.

As you can see in the previous photo, there was a lot of extra fabric, but when you trim it properly, the result is neat.

I made the heels out of wood. I had some round strips of wood and decided to see how that would work. I sawed the upper parts of the heels in 45 degree angle using a mitre box. Then I measured the height of the heels and sawed them off of the strip.

Next, I used a craft knife to make the front of the heel straight.

Then I covered the heels with the same fabric I used for the uppers.

Finally, I glued pieces of leather to the bottom of the heels, glued the heels in place, and glued pieces of leather as outer soles.

Here are the finished boots on Draculaura: