Polymer clay soles with stiletto heels

The latest video shows how to make soles using patterns with polymer clay. It is actually one of the easiest ways of making soles I have figured out so far, if you don't count the trouble of making the card stock supports. Then again, you can reuse those and make more than one pair of soles before using them for shoe soles as well.


Here are the finished shoes, which are also shown at the end of the video.

Unfinished projects

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 Alvin Ailey Barbie

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.

Silver leather ankle boots for Sybarite

I got the idea for these ankle boots from two pictures in the book A Century of Shoes: Icons of Style in the 20th Century. The pictures are these:


The good thing about this design is that it is a lot easier to make than normal ankle boot as the parts to be glued under the inner sole are almost straight.

I used a pair of soles I cast using casting resin. The color is a bit off in the picture as the soles are actually pale blue.


I drew a pattern first and marked the places for holes in it. Then I cut the pieces out of leather and marked the places for holes in them using the pattern.


The special tools needed are the pliers for making the holes and the tool for attaching the eyelets.


Here are the leather pieces with eyelets in place, but not hammered flat yet (if you want to see how to attach the eyelets, see the beginning of the video in the previous post). The eyelets are even paler blue than the soles. I would have preferred smaller eyelets in a slightly darker shade, but these were all I got.


Here are the inner soles before cutting the extra leather around the cardboard soles. As the outer soles are made of hard resin, the inner soles only consist of one piece of cardboard and one piece of leather. This is enough to keep the form during the assembly.


Here are the boots before gluing the outer soles in place.


And here are the finished boots.


For the Finnish post, see here.

Mould making: Casting the doll shoe soles

What I forgot to mention in the last post is that I don't recommend the silicone I used for making these moulds. The red stuff I used earlier (see my home page) was much easier to work with and that was the first time I was making this kind of moulds. I think that silicone was manufactured by hobbytime, but I'm not quite sure.

I am sure that I will try to find better silicone for the next time, if there is going to be a next time. Rai-Ro web shop sells two component silicone, which sounds promising. That one is mixed 1:1 and that should make things a lot easier.

Let's move on to the main subject of this post, casting the soles. The picture below shows the casting resin I'm using. Those bottles had these childproof caps that you need to press and turn. Bad idea. The bottles were made of very soft plastic and it was impossible to get the caps open. I ended up cutting the bottles open and pouring the contents into two small airtight containers.


Before starting, I made two openings in the moulds, one to pour the resin in, another one to let the air out. After several unsuccessful attempts, I realized that for some reason, air wasn't getting out as planned. That's when I made the third opening at the bottom of the heel and cast the first complete sole. So, you need three openings as shown in the picture below.


Treat the forms with the form separating agent and let it dry before closing them for casting. I used small clamps to keep the halves of the mould together. Sturdy pieces of cardboard on both sides of the mould distribute the pressure evenly. The clamps should not be tightened too much, just enough to keep the mould halves together. If you tighten the clamps too much, the mould may get distorted.

Pour in a little resin through the opening in the toe part, turn the mould carefully back and forth to spread the resin and let the air bubbles out (tap the mould lightly to loosen any air bubbles), pour in more resin, turn again, and continue until the mould is full. You can see it is full, when the surface of the resin rises to the middle opening, which is in the highest part of the mould.

You probably won't have much time for all this as the resin starts hardening fairly quickly (check the instructions of the resin you're using). Mix small batches of resin and work with one or two moulds at a time.

Measuring the correct amount of resin is difficult with something this small. We're talking about milliliters here and there is always going to be a little extra mixture, no matter how carefully you measure. This is where a mould for a wedge sole becomes handy.

I made a mould for a wedge sole, because you can leave a large opening in a mould like that. When you have filled the mould you're working with and there's a bit of resin mixture left, instead of just letting it harden in the mixing bowl, pour it in the wedge sole mould. It may not fill the mould entirely, but as you cast several soles and pour the extra in the wedge sole mould, you're going to end up with a wedge sole eventually. The structure of the mould makes it easy to fill the mould a little bit at a time instead of filling it all at once. And even if the resin is already starting to get a bit thicker, it can still be poured into an open mould like this.

Here is a little video clip showing some of what I have explained above.



You should remove the cast sole from the mould as soon as it is solid. At this stage, it is still soft and it will be easy to cut off all extra resin. Remove the sole from the mould, cut off the protruding pieces where the openings were, wash the sole (to remove any remaining form separating agent), and cut off any extra resin, for example, in the seams. Then check that the shape of the sole is correct, for example, that the heel is straight, and let the piece harden as long as is needed to achieve final hardness.

The instructions of the casting resin said that it can't be stored very long after the bottles have been opened, so I decided to use it all at once. The picture below shows the cast soles that are good enough to use for shoes. Some of them have holes left by air bubbles, but those can be filled in and covered. Mostly these are for Sybarite's shoes. Most of the small soles are for Silkstone Barbie and Fashion Royalty shoes, but the ones on front left are for Tonner's Tiny Kitty Collier. The individual heels and toe parts on the right are for Tonner's American Model. The transparent yellow soles are made of E-Z Water plastic using the wedge sole moulds.


Earlier posts on the subject:
Mould Making: Making a master
Mould making: Silicone
Mould making: Problems with silicone

For the Finnish post, see here.

Mould Making: Making a master

I started the process for making moulds for Sybarite's shoe soles. The first step is to create a master, that is, a model of the sole. I've made a couple of these and this post shows the making of a stiletto heel.

I am making a universal master, a sole that is the same for left and right foot, because this is difficult enough without having to try to make two pieces that are mirror images of each other.

First I carved the heel out of fairly hard wood. I often use balsa wood for making a master, but it was too fragile for this purpose.


Then I made the sole out of several layers of cardboard. The colors do not matter when making a master, only the shape.


Next, I glued the heel in place. I used PVA glue as always and this time there was a good reason to do so, as you will soon see.


I shaped the upper part of the heel using polymer clay. This is why PVA glue is a good idea. As the master consists only of wood, carboard, PVA glue and polymer clay, you can bake it in the oven. I'm not sure what would happen with other kinds of glue, but PVA can take 130 degrees Celsius easily. On the background, you can see a couple of other masters for Sybarite's shoe soles.


Here is the master with a plaster casting of Sybarite's foot. I must say I'm fairly pleased with the result so far. Of course the master still needs painting and light sanding before it is ready. The surface needs to be perfect, or as close to it as possible, because each sole cast with the mould will be an exact copy of the master.


It will take some time before I get to the actual mould making, because I need to make several masters for various dolls before that. Making the moulds is time consuming and a bit messy, so I prefer to do several moulds in a batch.

Currently, I have a couple of masters for Silkstone Barbie and several for Pullip, although they also need painting and sanding. I decided to try these, because all other ways of making soles for Barbie or Pullip shoes are more difficult.

Finnish post is here.

High heel platforms

I decided to try a new way of making platform shoes. This time I wanted to make something higher than ever before.

I started by cutting suitable pieces from thick foamcore and glueing them in two layers.

Then I painted them to fill in the biggest gaps, although they would not have shown under the fabric anyway.

The arching part of the sole is made of several layers of cardboard (160 g/m2). I think I put 5-6 layers in these.

When making parts like this, you need to use glue that doesn't set right away. Start with two layers, spread glue on one and place the other on top of it. Then you form the desired shape and keep the pieces in that shape until the glue has dried enough to prevent the pieces from getting out of shape. Then glue the rest of the layers one layer at a time.

Then I glued the parts together. I noticed afterwards that it would have been better, if couple of the lowest cardboard layers had gone all the way down. It would have been easier to make the soles keep their shape that way.

I covered the shoes with fabric that I had treated with sealer. The heels are cut from thin metal pipe and the parts where they are attached to are made of modelling clay (the type that does not need to be oven baked).

I used the same fabric for inner soles and straps. I only used two straps for the shoes as the patterns of the fabric were decorative enough and there was no need for a more complicated design.

I covered the rest with the same fabric and glued small pieces of leather for taps and to the part that shows green in the picture below.

The picture below shows the finished shoes on the doll. I haven't tried it, but I don't think the doll could stand wearing these, because of balance issues.

Original Finnish post