Booties for Jessica Rabbit

I started these over a year ago and managed to finish the cork soles, but then abandoned the project for something else. As I was going through some shoe pictures in fashion magazines, I got inspiration to finish these.

The soles consist of four parts each, the bottom and three vertical parts that form the wedge heel. When cutting the vertical parts, it's best to get the arch correct right from the start. Everything else is easy to carve into the right shape afterwards.

Here the heels are glued in place, but not yet carved into correct shape. Also, the bottom parts are a bit too long, but they were left that way on purpose, so it would be easy to get seamless fit with the wedges.

Here are the finished soles. As there won't be anything to cover the cork surface, it is important to get the seams as invisible as possible.

As I continued the project today, I first made the leather insoles. There was no need to use cardboard as the uppers were not going to go under the insoles.

I glued the edges of the uppers to the cork. Basically, you could finish the process here and use the shoes like this. However, I wanted something a bit different this time.

These are the parts that go around the ankles. I used 2 mm eylets and glued pieces of leather to the inside to protect the doll's feet from scratches.

Here are the ankle parts glued in place.

Then I hammered tiny nails to the edges of uppers. These are not necessary, because glue keeps the uppers in place, but I added them for decoration. You need to be careful to get the nails straight or they will come out through the insole or bottom of the cork sole. The shorter the nails are, the better.

Next, I glued pieces of leather to the bottom of the soles and made laces using cotton yarn. The beads in the ends of the laces are for decoration and also to keep the ends hanging down (that looks so much neater).