Sunday, November 30, 2014

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.


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