New use for Christmas decorations

I had covered resin wedge soles with black leather to illustrate the process and then I needed to figure out what to do with them. I decided to try a new strap design. The straps are black cotton treated with sealer. The three straps are glued to a small strip of fabric on the reverse side to keep them together.

I glued leather insoles in place and then glued the straps to the sides of the wedge soles with the ends going under the soles.

The final pieces came from this plastic Christmas decoration. I suppose you could use it in straps as it is, but I am always worried about scratches, so that's why I decided to use fabric straps underneath. Also, the plastic straps stay in their correct places better when they are glued to a stiffer structure.

I have used something similar once before and then I left the ends of the string visible, but this time I decided to glue the ends under the soles. This required removing some plastic beads to get just the thread inside. You can use pliers for that. Put the string between a flat part of the pliers and crush the beads, then remove the plastic pieces, so only the thread remains.

I glued the strings to the straps on the entire length to ensure they won't slip out of place and then glued the ends under the soles.

Then I glued the outer soles in place. The light-colored thread remained visible in some places, so I painted those parts black.

Shoes on shoes

When I found this fabric, I knew I had to get it for making a pair of shoes. Usually, the biggest problem is that all instances of a certain picture are facing the same way, but in this case, I found one that had a mirror image. It is the pair of green shoes, which became the main focus of the design. Also, the single floral shoe is the mirror image of one of the shoes in the pair.

I had made wedge soles for Tonner's Jessica Rabbit using polymer clay and they were big enough to accommodate the green shoes. The fabric had to be cut in two pieces to get as close to identical pieces as possible, which meant there would be seams on both sides of the soles.

One of the handbag pictures also had a mirror image, so I used those for the insoles. The pictures around them were different, so the tips of the insoles are different, but I decided to let that be.

This is the pattern for the strap. I used an actual picture for making it as it was important to get it just right. The pattern is a bit frayed as I did not treat the fabric with sealer before making it. However, I did treat the actual straps with sealer before cutting them out of the fabric using the pattern.

Here are the straps and insoles in place. I also used additional pictures from the fabric to hide the seams. I first treated the parts of fabric with sealer, which helped cut the pictures out accurately.

I also added pictures to the front of the soles, because the triangular pattern in the green part of the fabric was crooked in one of the soles Finally, I applied sealer all over the soles and glued the leather outer soles in place.

Slingbacks for Miss Piggy

I have spent almost the entire weekend with projects related to the book. Chapter 10 is basically finished now and chapter 9 is about 2/3 done. One of the projects contributing to these two was making yet another pair of shoes for Miss Piggy. It is so much easier to get good photos when you make things in her scale.

I started by making wedge soles combining wood and card stock. Making the wedges out of card stock in this scale would have required quite a lot of work, so wood was a better choice.

The next picture shows all the parts for the shoes: uppers (fabric treated with sealer), card stock insoles covered with fabric, painted wedge soles, and leather outer soles.

This time I decided to glue the ends of the straps together first and then glue the uppers in place as it is easier to position the uppers this way.

The finished shoes also got decorated with stickers. I applied sealer after attaching the stickers to make sure they will stay in place.