The many uses of sealer

No proper blog post this time either. I'm just making video tutorials at the moment and here's the latest one:

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.

More plastic

I decided to try the transparent plastic in Piggy's shoes. As usual, first I needed the insoles.

I glued fabric on them.

And turned the edges under the soles.

I'm usually not particular about the placement of patterns in insoles, but this time I made sure the they would be identical.

Then I cut wide straps from plastic, added strips of stickers, and applied glossy sealer to stop the stickers from falling off.

I made holes at the end of the straps as before and used double-sided tape to keep the straps in place before gluing.

I used one pair of the polymer clay heels just made. I applied one coat of glossy sealer, let it dry, added stickers, and then applied more sealer. The purpose of the first coat of sealer was to make the surface less porous and help the stickers stay in place.

I actually applied the last coat of sealer after assembling the shoes and hung the shoes to dry. The result is always neater, if you can apply the sealer to all necessary surfaces (sides, back, front, bottom) at once, but that means you need to figure out a way to place the heels/shoes to dry in a way that the wet surfaces won't touch anything.

Here are the shoes on 16" Miss Piggy.

For the previous post on using transparent plastic, see here.

Transparent plastic

This was my first attempt of using transparent plastic for doll shoes. These are for Monster High dolls.

The plastic needs to be that soft and pliable, slightly stretchy variant. The piece I used was from a protective cover of a calendar, I think. The Create a Monster legs can be very handy for making shoes for the dolls, because they are easier to handle than the entire doll and more durable than plaster castings. The rows of pearls are sticker strips, which are easier to handle than separate stickers.

I started by making patterns for the required parts.

Then I made the insoles from two layers of cardboard and glued fabric on top.

This photo shows one finished insole and the other one waiting for some more gluing.

Cutting the upper pieces from plastic was a bit tricky as the patterns kept slipping from the plastic. I finally managed to cut all parts, but photographing them was the next challenge.

I didn't want totally transparent uppers, so I glued some pearls to the pieces.

Then I applied sealer to make sure the stickers won't fall off. Here are the pieces waiting for the sealer to dry.

When the pieces were dry, I used some double-sided adhesive tape to attach the ankle strap bottoms to each other. Then I made a hole to the part where they overlap. The toe straps also got tape and holes for the reason explained below.

Although double-sided tape is quite good at keeping the plastic pieces in place temporarily while you haven't glued the outer sole in place yet, I didn't trust it to be a permanent solution. That is why I made the holes in the plastic pieces. The holes need to go through the plastic and any tape there might be, so that when you glue the outer sole in place, it and the cardboard sole will be glued directly to each other in the places where the holes are. These "plugs" will stop the plastic pieces from sliding anywhere, especially as the outer sole and cardboard sole will be glued to each other on both sides of the plastic pieces. So, the plastic is locked in the correct position and cannot move anywhere.

For closing the ankle strap, I attached a small bead to the other side and made a hole to the end of the strap going across the ankle. I used transparent thread for the bead and secured the knot with glue.

This is the construction after gluing the outer soles in place.

My uncle left a big stash of wooden cigarrette holders and I've been finding various uses for them. This time I decided to try using them for heels.

I sawed and cut them to a suitable shape and used cardboard to close all openings. Before gluing the top shut, I actually filled the heels with sand to help them keep their shape.

Then I glued the heels in place and painted them.

Here are the shoes on my custom Create a Monster doll "Bee."

Shoes for 16" Miss Piggy

The basis for these shoes were plaster castings I had made some time ago. I glued the platform toe parts to cardboard soles that had 3 layers of cardboard glued in shape.

Next, I covered the sides of the toe parts with leather and filled gaps with leftover pieces to make sure that the outer soles would stay even when glued in place.

Then I covered the plaster casting heels with leather and glued them in place. Usually the heels are the last part to be glued, but I wanted to try a different method this time.

Then I covered with leather the edges that still had cardboard visible. The metal strip you can see in the photo is there to provide extra support to keep the arch in correct form. I don't use that a lot, but Piggy weighs more than smaller dolls, so some additional strength is a good idea.

For the closing mechanism I decided to try hook and eye, which turned out to be a bad idea as you can see later.

The straps are made of leather and the decorations are actually sticker strips with transparent background. Those are really easy to use for something like this. I covered the strips with glossy sealer just to be sure that nothing will fall off later.

The insoles are made of cardboard and covered with leather leaving some extra around the edges. I cut off the extra where the straps went, but in other places I turned it under the soles.

Here you can see the insoles with some sections already turned under.

The problem with hook and eye was that the end of the strap pointed to the side instead of going along the side of the foot. As I had already glued the pieces in place, I decided to fix this by cutting the hooks, pressing them flat and gluing the straps to the leather strips that held the hooks. So the result is no closing mechanism at all, but fortunately Miss Piggy's feet are different from most other dolls' feet and even shoes with fixed straps placed this high will be fine.

Finally, here are the finished shoes. The outer soles are finished with pieces of dark brown leather.