Baha Cat's boot lasts

The final piece of resin casting was making a pair of boot lasts for the Baha Cat. I used the last I made using balsa wood. I made one latex mold, then placed it beside the last when making the second one, so the two molds are connected and, thus, easier to keep upright when pouring the resin into them.

I cast a pair of lasts from the regular resin, and as I had some clear resin left, I used that for making an additional last just for fun.

Flat soles using MoldMaker

In one the old videos, I made flat soles for the Baha Cat using polymer clay with a mold. This new video is about making flat soles using mold making clay and polymer clay. The doll for which I'm making the soles is again Baha Cat, although near the end, I'm also showing a mold for male Monster High dolls and some soles I made using it.

Leather shoes with buckles for the Baha Cat

I made leather shoes with buckles for the Baha Cat to go with the folk costume I'm making for the doll. The shoes I've seen in photos vary, but the common factor is black leather and gold colored buckles, so these should be close enough.

Here are the parts for the shoes. The insoles are made of one layer of cardboard covered with leather.


I started by attaching the toe part. As these shoes need to go over the wool socks I have knitted for the doll, the doll needed to have the socks on to make sure the shoes would be big enough.


These parts form the back and sides of the shoes. I attached the buckle first, so I was able to check before gluing anything that I could get the opposite strap into it. To see how to glue these parts in place, see this earlier blog post.


Here are the finished shoes.


Here are the shoes on the doll's feet.

Shoe patterns on my web site

You can now find the patterns for Baha Cat boots and Schizo's shoes on my web site.

Making boots for a Pipos Baha Cat BJD, part II

Here is the second part of the video for making the Baha Cat boots.




The boots with the polymer clay outer soles glued in place.


With laces made of cotton yarn.


And last, but not least, Baha Cat in an outside photo shoot.





Earlier posts on the subject:
Mould making: Flat soles with Sculpey Mold Maker
Making a foot last for a doll with flat feet
Making boots for a Pipos Baha Cat BJD, part I

For the Finnish post, see here.

Making boots for a Pipos Baha Cat BJD, part I

I decided to make the red leather boots first. They are not finished yet, so this is just the first part. The picture below shows what is finished so far.


The video below shows the progress so far. The rest will be in part II.




Earlier posts on the subject:
Mould making: Flat soles with Sculpey Mold Maker
Making a foot last for a doll with flat feet

For the Finnish post, see here.

Making a foot last for a doll with flat feet

I have usually made plaster castings of dolls' feet for making shoes for them, but BJDs are a bit difficult in that respect. They have open joints in ankles, so it is very hard to make a latex mould of their feet. I have done it with Sybarite, but I decided to try something else with the Pipos Baha Cat.

I carved a foot last out of balsa wood. It will be used for boots, so it doesn't matter if it is not exactly the right size as long as it is bigger than the doll's foot. After carving and sanding, I painted the last with acrylic paint.


As you can see, it is roughly the size and shape of the doll's foot. The exact shape depends on what kind of toe part the shoes are to have. I decided to make it round as that fits best the overall shape of the foot.


Afterwards, I thought that as I am going to use this for boots, maybe it would be better to have the ankle in it as well. So, I glued another piece of balsa wood on top of the last and carved the ankle part.


I will use this for making boots using the soles I made earlier out of polymer clay.

For the Finnish post, see here.

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.

Baha Cat

Dolls and Friends was closing and there was this Pipos Baha Cat on 65% discount, so I got one a bit ahead of the schedule.

I wanted to take pictures of the doll outside and as it is winter now, she needed shoes for that. The doll's feet are fairly small, which limits the types of shoes I can make for her. However, boots with laces are always a safe option, so I started with those.

The picture below shows the inner soles (thick white leather) and the upper parts (brown leather). There are only three pairs of holes for the laces as the eyelets were a bit large.

The next stage was gluing the upper parts in place.

The leather was fairly thick, so I had to glue filler parts on the soles to make sure they would be even after gluing the outer soles in place.

The finished shoes look like this. The picture was cropped from one of the outdoor photos of the doll.

This picture shows the outer soles, which are also made of leather.

Original Finnish post is here.