Copying a real-life design

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.

Louboutin Barbie shoes

The Louboutin shoes for Barbie finally arrived. The first photo shows the contents of the set: 9 pairs of shoes, 9 shoe boxes, 9 shoe pouches with print, and a stack of silk paper. As you can see in this picture, also the insides of the shoes are painted, which is unusual. The outer soles have the signature red of Louboutin shoes.

My favorite pair is the red one. It is also one of the two pairs that fit Silkstone Barbies as you can see in the picture.

The blue pair also fits Silkstones and is almost as nice as the red.

The rest of the shoes only fit regular Barbies. Here they are shown on a Fashionistas Barbie. I didn't even bother to try the shoes on my Hollywood Royalty Lana Turner doll, as her feet are wider than Silkstone Barbie's. As you can see from some of the thinner heels, these shoes are made of fairly soft plastic. That means bending heels, but otherwise the shoes seem more durable than the ones made of harder plastic.

The black pair with ribbons is my third favorite.

The ankle straps of the shoes have an opening to get the shoes on the doll's feet. I'm not sure which Barbie these were designed for, but the straps won't go all the way around Fashionista's ankles.


The straps of the pink shoes are closed, but it was fairly easy to get the shoes on the doll's feet. When I saw the first photos of the set, I didn't think much of these, but they are actually quite nice.

The upmost strap of these shoes is open on the back and the opening leaves a huge gap.

The opening in this pair is similar to what is used in boots and looks much nicer than the way the black pair was made.

Real shoes

I saw these one time as I was window shopping. Wouldn't mind having them myself, if only I could use them. Now I just took out my phone and snapped a photo.


I've been thinking of making similar doll shoes. It shouldn't be too hard, although bending six identical figures from metal wire could be a challenge.

My dolls dress better than I do

I wasn't going to order these, but couldn't resist the temptation. So, I made the preorder and should get them in a couple of months. The way I thought it was that I'm never going to get a chance to wear Louboutin shoes, so I could at least get them for my dolls.

Manolo Blahnik copy

As I was thinking of making copies of Manolo Blahnik shoes for a doll, I was thinking about high heels, but I ended up making something else instead.

The original shoe looks like this:


I used brown leather for the doll shoes as there was enough of it and I also had matching satin for the inside.

The pattern for the upper was easy to make by modifying a previous pattern.


After I had glued the upper in place, I glued satin to the inside parts that would remain visible and fixed them into the correct shape with adhesive tape while the glue hadn't dried yet.


When the glue was dry, I removed the tape and cut off extra fabric. The parts remained in the desired shape well enough.


Here are the finished shoes in plaster castings of the doll's feet.


For the Finnish post, see here.

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.

Christian Dior shoes for Silkstone Barbie

I've got the Shoes Gallery Calendar 2009 (Page a Day Gallery Calendar) and I noticed something interesting when I bought a Barbie outfit set a couple of weeks ago.

The picture for May 4th was a Christian Dior shoe from 2007:




And this is the pair from Mattel's Barbie outfit pack (it had three dresses for Barbie and a groom outfit for Ken):




The similarity is quite remarkable, although the Barbie shoes are much too small to include that twisted strip structure the Christian Dior shoe has.

For the Finnish post, see here.