Mould making: Flat soles with Sculpey Mold Maker

I am going to make some moulds for doll shoe soles. There is some info on my home page, but I'll go into more detail here. Also, I know a lot more now than I did when I wrote those instructions.

I'll start with flat soles for Baha Cat's boots. The boots will be similar to the ones I have made earlier with cork soles for a lot bigger doll.

First I drew a pattern for the foot. Then I cut one piece of foam core and several layers of cardboard using the pattern.


I glued the cardboard pieces together, cut a heel out of that piece and glued it in place to the foamcore sole.


Then I drew a pattern for the sole in the rest of the multilayer piece, cut out the pieces and glued them to the foam core sole.


When the glue was dry, I painted the sole. I used gloss acrylic paint and applied several coats.


Now I had the model ready and it was time to make a mould. I used Sculpey Mold Maker, because that is what was available. There may be other clays similar to it.


See the instructions in the package for making the mould. I noticed that it is easier to make the mould, if you cool the clay in the fridge for some time (after shaping it to suitable size) before pressing the object into it.


Bake the clay in the oven according to the instructions in the package. When the mould is cool, mist it with water and press a piece of polymer clay into it. As you may guess from the amount of water, I didn't actually mist the mould, I just put it under the tap and then shook off the extra water. It works fine that way.



After making the desired amount of pieces, bake them in the oven. I used red clay to get better pictures. The actual soles are going to be black or brown, but I do have some red leather, so maybe the Baha Cat is going to get red boots as well.


This mould was easy to make. I'm also planning on making moulds for casting plastic soles for Sybarite's shoes, but more about that later.








Finnish post is here.