Painting resin soles

The latest video is about painting resin soles. I'm painting a pair of Monster High soles with gold color and towards the end of the video I'm telling a bit about how the book project is going.

Book update

I just want to let you know that I am still writing the book. The current word count is about 12,500 and there are lots of photos already. I have been taking new photos to get better quality than in the ones I have used in the blog, but due to the uniqueness of some photos, I will be using some old ones as well.

The structure of the book is now set and shouldn't change much after this. Chapters 1–4 present some tools and materials, chapters 5–6 are about different casting methods and making foot lasts of your doll's feet, chapters 7–9 introduce different ways of making soles and heels for shoes, and chapters 10–13 describe making uppers for different kinds of shoes.

It is really great that I don't have to worry about the length of the book or the number of photos, because there won't be any printing involved. I'm including a lot of example photos of what can be done with different materials and photos that show a sequence of actions for certain processes.

Finally, here is one of the new photos I have taken. I don't remember, if I have ever shown these before. These shoes are made of copper sheet using super glue and they are among my earliest experiments in making doll shoes (around 1998, I think). The thin copper sheet I used bends really easily, so these are purely decorative and cannot be used on a doll.

Fix for sticky silicone

On my first try of making silicone moulds, I got some problems with the hardener and parts of the mould remained sticky. This time, I tried to mix the hardener to the silicone more thoroughly, but still got some sticky parts. However, I found a fix for the problem. It occurred to me that as the hardener mixed in the silicone hardens it, hardener applied with a brush to the sticky surface should do the same. I tried it and it worked.

The uneven parts in the picture were the ones that remained sticky. They have a slightly different color, because the hardener is blue (to make it easier to see if it has been mixed in the silicone well enough).

Update on the book:

I have written most of the chapters about mould making and casting, plus quite a lot about materials. I currently have about 9,000 words written, plus 70 photos. There will be quite a lot of photos in the book, because it is so much easier to show things in pictures. It should also be easier for people with less than perfect command of English. The current plan is to have the book available only in English, although a Finnish version is also possible later, if I feel like translating the book and have time to do it.

The main change to the original plan is that I won't include any example projects. The book will be long enough with the other material. I'm thinking about a possibility of making another book later about example projects. First I need to get this one finished and see how much interest there is.

Book about doll shoe making techniques

I have been planning on collecting together and organizing information on tools, materials and techniques for making doll shoes. Much of the information is already in this blog, but it is here and there and may not be easy to find. That is why I'm planning on writing a book about the subject.

To keep the costs down, I am planning on making it an ebook, specifically a Kindle book available through Amazon. This way, I do not need to limit the number of pages and can be as elaborate as I think is necessary.

Considering my track record of unfinished projects, I cannot make any promises about if and when the book will be ready, but I have started planning the structure of the book and what information to include. This is where you, the readers of my blog, enter the picture. If there is a specific subject you would like to see included or any other requests, leave a comment to this blog post or tweet it to @kenkafriikki.

The preliminary plan for the structure is to have four main parts: Tools, Materials, Techniques for different parts of shoes, and example projects showing how to make shoes from start to finish (also different scales and different skill levels from very easy to ones using advanced techniques). This may change once I start writing the book and see how the structure works.

Update: I checked the sales of my previous book and as it seems not to be selling anymore, I lowered the price. You can find it here. It is not exactly cheap even at the new price, but an even lower price would mean all profits going to Blurb. Actually, the printing cost is the main reason of choosing the ebook format for the next book.

The actual book

The book arrived today. I took a picture so that I'm holding it to let you see the size. The print quality is good and my only grumble is that the insides of the covers are white although the background on the front and back covers and all pages is black, but it's a minor issue.


The preview below shows some pages from various parts of the book. The spreads are not shown correctly in the preview as it shows odd pages on left and even pages on right and it should be just the other way round.

Fashion Doll Shoes by Tarja Simpanen | Make Your Own Book

The Fashion Doll Shoes book

The book is ready. I've been going through the text over and over again after making the corrections suggested by the proofreader, but I finally decided that further editing would not improve it. I ordered my copy today and after I have received it and made sure there are no problems, I will make the book available in Blurb.

The book covers will look like this:

Suomenkielinen versio tulee saataville myöhemmin.

I'm making a book

I was looking at old photos, when I realized that the first pictures I have of doll shoes I have made are from August 2000. That's ten years ago.

I had been thinking of collecting photos of finished shoes in a photo book, which would have just the images. However, I thought it could be nicer to make a sort of "first ten years" book with a little more thought. So, I installed Blurb's BookSmart and started working.

The picture shows that the book has 26 pages, but that's just at the moment. I'm almost halfway through, but I don't really know how long it will be, except that it'll be under 80 pages due to the price categories. The cheapest option is 40 pages or less and the next level is 80 pages or less and that's what I aim at.

I'm not good at the layout stuff, so I'm using the ready made templates available in the program. I'm using a combination of chronological order and categorizing by the doll. The chapters have a short introduction of the doll and some other comments and then pictures of the shoes. There's one or two spreads per doll and boots will have a chapter of their own.

If I ever get this finished and if it turns out all right, I will probably make the book publicly available in Blurb in case anyone is interested.