Foot lasts

I have shown how to make foot lasts for dolls by casting their feet using latex molds, but this is the real deal. These are real-life foot lasts for making shoes. They are made of wood, which is the usual material for foot lasts. I assume these are very old and they were among the old items the previous owner left at the house my brother and his wife currently own.

New video tutorial

This video shows you how to cast foot lasts using the latex moulds made in the previous video.




And what happened to the rest of the resin? There was very little left, but fortunately, doll shoes can have really tiny soles. I picked two wedge sole moulds for the final castings.

As I only have one mould per design, I had to mix the resin in two batches. That wasn't easy, considering that this was all the hardener left:

And there wasn't much resin left in the bottle either.

This photo shows the tiny air bubbles you may get in the mixed resin. Letting the mixture be for a minute after mixing helps getting rid of these.

Here are the finished soles. The ones on the left are for Silkstone Barbies and the ones on the right for Pepper Parsons (a Pinkie Cooper doll).

I was curious to see how good I had been at measuring the components. The resin and hardener came in 250 ml bottles. At the time the hardener ran out, there was some resin left. About 7 ml isn't much when you consider the total amount.

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.

More resin casting

I have continued my experiments with latex moulds. I'm still having trouble with very small/thin parts, so when I decided to try Barbie-sized soles, I chose wedges. I had a cheap set of shoes for Steffi and picked a pair of those. In the photo, you can see an original shoe, one with straps removed, a resin casting, and the latex mould. Pouring resin into a mould this small is challenging, as is getting all air bubbles out, but it can be done.

Another part of my experiments is making foot lasts for all 1/6 scale dolls. In the photo below, the foot lasts from left to right belong to these dolls: Hollywood Royalty Lana Turner, Silkstone Barbie, Tiny Kitty Collier, Monster High Howleen, Bratzillaz, and Pinkie Cooper.

Casting resin: Feet with ankle joints

When I was ordering resin, I didn't realize that the bottles I got for my first try were 100 ml and the ones I ordered now were 250 ml. That's 0.5 liters of resin and it's a lot when making as small castings as doll shoe soles. So, I decided to make several castings of doll feet now that I found out I can use latex moulds. I've only got 500 g of silicone and that doesn't make many moulds, because you need so much of it around the master. 300 ml of latex, on the other hand, is enough for a bunch of moulds.

I wanted to find a better way of making castings of feet with ankle joints. The first time I tried it, I used saran wrap to protect the ankles and the resulting castings weren't very pretty, even though they were perfectly usable.

This time I was wondering if flower tape would do the job. It's stretchy and slightly adhesive, but not so much that it would leave glue stains to the doll's feet.

Monster High Deuce got to be the guinea pig for this experiment. I wrapped flower tape tightly around his ankles and then applied a few layers of latex.

The moulds weren't too hard to remove, even though flower tape has matte surface. You just need to make sure there are no open seams for the latex to go into and everything should work fine. Below are the finished moulds with some supports and ready for casting.

This is what the castings look like. Much neater than when using saran wrap. These are for making shoes with low heels, so that's the reason for the angle of the ankle.

Resin casting with latex moulds

As I was reading the instructions of the casting materials I bought, it started to look like latex moulds could be used for resin casting. Of course I had to try it. For the experiment, I chose making castings of the Hollywood Royalty Lana Turner's feet. Plaster castings of that size are not very durable, so I thought it would be great to have them made of resin.

The earlier blog post about making foot lasts can be found here. This time I was using latex meant for making tubular moulds, so it worked a lot better.

When I made the latex moulds, I made small tabs on the back, so it would be easy to hang the moulds from the clips in my magnifying glass. Hanging them helps to keep the correct form while the resin hardens.

I treated the insides of the moulds with form releasing wax to protect the latex and to help remove the castings. I'm happy to say that the casting was successful and I now have resin foot lasts for Lana. There was an air bubble in her left big toe, so that's a small flaw, but it does not affect the usability of the lasts.

I also made some resin shoe soles using latex moulds. Unfortunately, the latex seems to deteriorate very quickly when used for resin casting. It can be used, but I didn't manage to make very many castings with one mould before holes started to appear. That could be due to not having just the right kind of form releasing agent. There are so many different varieties that it is hard to know, which one should be used. I used what I happened to have and it was the wax I bought for making and using silicone moulds.

I'm currently writing the chapters about mould making, casting, and doll feet, so this was part of the experiments I'm doing to figure out what needs to be included in the instructions. Doing it all as I'm writing also helps to remember things that have gone wrong and to find out new things that can go wrong, so I can include tips for avoiding those.

Making the left shoe

I haven't yet found the optimal doll foot for making shoes. A close one would be the Monster High doll foot in American Model size. I have also sometimes thought how easy it would be to just make one shoe, instead of having to make a pair of shoes that need to be mirror images of each other. I was thinking that especially with the recent cardboard experiments. So, I decided to take a slightly different point of view on making shoes. I am going to try to make some as purely sculptures and make just the left shoe.

For that, I still need a foot last, so I bought some air-dry modeling clay and made a last that will be good enough. The most important part is the arch of the foot for forming the shoe sole.


Another good thing about this sculptural approach is that I won't need to think about how to get the shoe on and off the foot once it is finished. All I need is to remember to take it off the foot last before adding any parts that would prevent me from doing that.

I think this is going to be fun.

Foot size comparison

My latest acquisition is Tonner's Jessica Rabbit and I just made plaster castings of her feet. Comparing her feet to the ones of Tonner's American Model prompted me to do some more comparisons. I used plaster castings for these as they were easier to photograph. The unit of measurement shown is cm.

The first photo shows the left foot of following dolls (from left to right): American Model (AM), Jessica Rabbit (Athletic Body, AB), Tyler Wentworth (TW). Considering that the TW body is 16" and the AB is 17", the difference in foot size is notable. However, what I found most interesting was that the feet of the AM and AB have exactly the same arch, only the AB feet are about 0.5 cm shorter, making it impossible to use AM shoes on Jessica.




The next photo shows the left foot of the following dolls: Tyler Wentworth (TW), Sybarite (SY), Monster High (MH), Silkstone Barbie (SB). I did this mainly to check how the MH feet differ from the other dolls. TW feet are a lot bigger, which I could see even without this comparison. SY feet are longer and wider, so no luck there either, although the arch is very similar to MH feet. The SB foot is there just to show you that Barbie shoes could not fit MH dolls. Unfortunately, I don't have plaster castings of Hi:Glam doll's feet, so I couldn't include one in this photo. However, at least their boots fit MH dolls.




The last photo is of smaller dolls' feet. The leftmost is of a playline Barbie, next is Silkstone Barbie, and the one on the right is Tonner's Tiny Kitty. All Barbie shoes fit playline Barbies, some fit Silkstones, and none fit Tiny Kitty.

Making a foot last for a doll with flat feet

I have usually made plaster castings of dolls' feet for making shoes for them, but BJDs are a bit difficult in that respect. They have open joints in ankles, so it is very hard to make a latex mould of their feet. I have done it with Sybarite, but I decided to try something else with the Pipos Baha Cat.

I carved a foot last out of balsa wood. It will be used for boots, so it doesn't matter if it is not exactly the right size as long as it is bigger than the doll's foot. After carving and sanding, I painted the last with acrylic paint.


As you can see, it is roughly the size and shape of the doll's foot. The exact shape depends on what kind of toe part the shoes are to have. I decided to make it round as that fits best the overall shape of the foot.


Afterwards, I thought that as I am going to use this for boots, maybe it would be better to have the ankle in it as well. So, I glued another piece of balsa wood on top of the last and carved the ankle part.


I will use this for making boots using the soles I made earlier out of polymer clay.

For the Finnish post, see here.

Sybarite's feet

Handling an entire doll is always a bit difficult and there is the risk that the doll will be stained by glue, paint or some other material used in making the shoes. That is why I usually make plaster castings of the doll's feet. I was a bit hesitant to do this with the Sybarite as she is made of different material than the vinyl dolls. Finally, I decided to try making a latex mould.

The latex I had used previously had become clumpy so I had to buy more of the stuff. Unfortunately, the new brand turned out to be almost unusable. The brand of latex shown below is not suitable for making tubular moulds. It is too thick and will rip easily under the sort of stress the mould is subjected to when removing it from the doll's leg.


As I could not get better latex right now, I decided to try this stuff anyway, although I had already found out how unsuitable for the purpose it was. I felt awful spreading the stuff on the feet of the doll that had been so expensive. It probably would have been a good idea to try the latex first on some part not usually visible, for example, the scalp.


I'm happy to tell that the doll suffered no ill effects from the latex. And I even managed to get the moulds out in one piece. That was probably because they were short and the hole was quite large.


Then followed casting the plaster. I used soles I had made for Sybarite to support the moulds. They helped to keep the moulds in correct position and also to keep the shape of the arch correct.


So now I have a pair of Sybarite feet. Their surface is not perfect due to the poor quality of the latex, but they are good enough for making shoes.



Original Finnish post