New foot lasts

Going through the stuff inspired me to do something else as well. I decided to use the rest of the casting resin before it goes bad. The latex is also getting a bit thick, so it's better to use it as well. So, I'm making some more foot lasts.

All this has been done before and posted in this blog, but here are some photos anyway. The first one shows Sybarite's feet with flower tape around the ankles and several layers of latex applied.

The next one is Tonner's Jessica Rabbit (17" athletic body). First with flower tape covering the ankle joints...

...and then with latex applied.

Here are the finished moulds for both.

And here are the resin castings made with the moulds. You can see the flower tape clearly, but it is much neater than saran wrap.

As you can see in this photo showing the earlier plaster castings of Sybarite's feet and the new resin castings.

Wedges for Sybarite

I realized I haven't used many of the cast resin soles I made for Sybarite a few years ago. I found interesting plastic material I wanted to use, so I decided to use a pair of cast resin wedge soles with that. I started by painting the soles black using enamel paint (solvent-based). The extra sole in front is there to show how the soles look straight out of the mould.

The plastic for the uppers looks like this. It was rectangular originally, but I had already cut the required pieces out at this point. These were available in various colors at 2 € per 10 x 12 cm piece. I got this and another piece in silver.

Here are the pieces for the shoes before trimming the edges.

And a closeup showing the structure of the material better.

Plus another closeup showing the back.

The insole is just one layer of card stock and a piece of leather. There was no reason to use more layers of card stock as the arch in the soles is exactly the same as in Sybarite's foot, so the foot provided the desired form during assembly. After trimming the edges of the plastic pieces, I attached them using sewing thread.

Here are the straps with sewing thread attached.

And here they are in place. As you can see, they stay straight at this stage because of the way the sewing threads are attached, but gluing the ends to the sides of the soles will correct that.

The ankle part is closed with a strap made of leather.

I attached a small piece of bent wire at the end of the strap and that goes through a hole on the opposite side as shown in the photo. It is the same method I used for Monster High shoes with cork soles and it works surprisingly well despite being so simple. You just need to apply a lot of glue on the inside of the strap where the end of the wire is to make sure the wire will stay in place and won't scratch the doll's foot.

All that is missing now are the wedge soles.

The strap looked a bit out of place as it was, so I decided to glue some leftover pieces to it.

Then it was time to glue the wedge soles in place and the ends of the toe straps to the sides of the soles, so the straps would keep their correct form.

Shoes for Sybarite

I found some tiny stickers and wanted to use them for doll shoes. As I hadn't made anything for the Sybarite in a long time, I decided to use the resin soles I made some time ago.

First step was painting them. I used two tiny plastic cups and attached the soles to them with double-sided mounting tape to be able to paint all sides at once (except the insoles). I used Revell Enamel Paint number 04 for these.

Here is the sheet of stickers. You can't really see the scale, but the photos further below will make that clear.

For the uppers, I decided to use clear plastic. Below you can see the type of plastic I'm using for the doll shoes. It is soft and doesn't show any creases even after doing this:

The insoles have two layers of cardboard and one layer of leather, and I painted the edges.

The following photos show the order of attaching the stickers.

I even decided to put some on the insoles where they would remain visible.

After attaching all stickers, it was time to apply sealer. Again I attached the soles to the plastic cups to get even layer of sealer on all sides.

The uppers are very simple as there is no point doing anything very elaborate when using clear plastic alone (without any stickers).

I cut the pieces from the plastic and used the lines in the pattern to attach pieces of double-sided adhesive tape to the parts that go under the insole.

After making holes to the flaps, I attached the uppers. For more information on why I made the holes, see an earlier blog post.

Then I just needed to glue the insoles in place. Here are the finished shoes from several angles.

Silver sandals for Sybarite

These sandals started with two small pieces of balsa wood cut into shape and painted black.


Then I made the insoles of cardboard and glued them into the balsa pieces. I took the picture before painting the other one, so you can see the shape of the cardboard and how it was glued in place.


Next, I glued silver colored leather to the insole. Usually it would have come later, but as I wasn't going to glue the edges of the uppers under the insole, this could be done at this point.


The next picture shows the rest of the leather parts in place.


Here is a closeup of the mechanism used for the ankle straps. The other end of the strap only needs a loop into which you insert the hook. The hook is bent slightly outwards to prevent it from scratching the doll's foot. This is a simple, but effective mechanism. The only difficulty is determining exactly the correct length for the strap, so that it will be possible to insert the hook, but the strap isn't left too loose.


Finally, here is a photo of the shoes on the doll's feet. The heels are made of balsa wood and covered with the same silver colored leather.

I am psychic

A little while ago, I bought a magazine called "Vogue Collections numéro 9 - Spring-Summer 2010" to get all 110 pages of shoe pictures included in it. As I was going through the pictures, I found something interesting on page 302, which had photos of Roberto Cavalli's shoes.

Here is one of the shoes shown on that page. Take a good look at the sole...


and then compare it to this:



I made these shoes in July 2007. (For the English description published later, see here.) The basic structure of the sole is similar, although not quite the same.

Shoe size comparison

I ordered a Basic Miss Piggy in May and she has finally arrived. She's about as tall as Tonner's 16" dolls, but as you can guess, she's a bit wider. The picture below shows her with Sybarite Savoy.

Because she is a Basic Miss Piggy, the outfit is simple and so are the shoes, which are on the right side in the following picture. On the left are shoes for Sybarite and in the middle shoes for American Model.

As you can see, Miss Piggy's feet are considerably bigger, which is a good thing as it means more room for details in the shoes. Right now I'm making latex moulds of her feet and next I will make plaster castings of them. Then I will hopefully have time for making something interesting. I guess it's time to look at the shoe books and calendars for some inspiration.
For the Finnish post, see here.

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.