Experiment with metal foil

This is going to be a long post. I decided to try something new and wasn't sure how it would turn out. I ended up fixing things a few times when everything didn't go quite as planned.

To start with, I made a pattern for the soles (the doll is the 16" Miss Piggy). Then I cut the soles out of metal sheet (0.3 mm thickness, cut with shears) and bent them to follow the bottoms of the doll's feet.

The other parts of the soles were resin castings I had made earlier. A pair of platforms and heels.

I used hot glue to attach the platform parts to the metal soles. At this point I realized the sides would need something to cover them and make them more even. The resin castings were made using a latex mold, so they had some bumps.

I had this thick and stiff leather that hadn't been useful for anything else, but I thought it would make an even surface for the sides and undersides of the soles. So I cut suitable pieces and glued them on the soles. Again, using hot glue. Actually, everything that required glue in this project was done with hot glue. The new hot glue gun is so handy.

Then I glued the heels in place. These soles were to be covered with metal foil all over, so all pieces needed to be in place before starting that.

The metal foil came from chocolate wrappers. It seems that those all have the inside covered with paper nowadays. Probably some food safety issue. Anyway, the paper had to go before the foil would be usable for two reasons: 1) the foil was too stiff, and 2) the foil had some text embossed into it and that had to go. So, I soaked the foils in water overnight to soften the paper.

When the paper was all soaked and soft, I used my thumbnail to scrape it off. That was slow and tedious work, and the paper started to dry after a while, so I had to put the foil back to water occasionally.

It was impossible to remove all traces of paper, but I got off enough of it for the foil to be usable. I also thought that the glue would probably take better with some traces of paper still left on the foil.

Then I glued the foil on the soles. Unfortunately, even with the leather, the surface was very uneven.

I had been hoping to have the foil to be the finished surface, but it just didn't look that nice. So I decided that I had to do something else with these. But first, I cut insoles out of gold-colored leather and glued them in place. I usually use a neutral light color, but I thought this fit the soles well.

I decided to use this gold-colored decorative plastic band for the straps and cover as much of the sides as possible with it to draw attention away from all the unevenness of the foil surface.

Here are the shoes with the straps glued in place. After this I glued some strings of those decorations to the sides of the heels. I also glued pieces of leather under the heels and platform parts to make the soles even and help keep the shoes upright when they are not on the doll's feet.

Finally, here are some photos of the finished shoes on Miss Piggy.

Fixing the problem in the metal shoes

I have uploaded the second part about making the metal shoes. I figured out a way to fix things in a satisfactory manner, but although the video is really long, there is still more to do later.

When everything goes wrong

The next video is now in YouTube and this time things didn't go as planned, because I was using new material. The first experiment with it was a tunic for a Monster High Create A Monster doll, but I wanted to try it also for shoes.

This video is a more realistic view on how the doll shoe projects often go. The tutorials before this one are about subjects I know really well, so things can look easy. Trying new things is always different.




Here is a photo of the shoes as they are now. I have a plan for the ankle straps and will make a video about that soon.

Book update

I just want to let you know that I am still writing the book. The current word count is about 12,500 and there are lots of photos already. I have been taking new photos to get better quality than in the ones I have used in the blog, but due to the uniqueness of some photos, I will be using some old ones as well.

The structure of the book is now set and shouldn't change much after this. Chapters 1–4 present some tools and materials, chapters 5–6 are about different casting methods and making foot lasts of your doll's feet, chapters 7–9 introduce different ways of making soles and heels for shoes, and chapters 10–13 describe making uppers for different kinds of shoes.

It is really great that I don't have to worry about the length of the book or the number of photos, because there won't be any printing involved. I'm including a lot of example photos of what can be done with different materials and photos that show a sequence of actions for certain processes.

Finally, here is one of the new photos I have taken. I don't remember, if I have ever shown these before. These shoes are made of copper sheet using super glue and they are among my earliest experiments in making doll shoes (around 1998, I think). The thin copper sheet I used bends really easily, so these are purely decorative and cannot be used on a doll.

High heel platforms

I decided to try a new way of making platform shoes. This time I wanted to make something higher than ever before.

I started by cutting suitable pieces from thick foamcore and glueing them in two layers.

Then I painted them to fill in the biggest gaps, although they would not have shown under the fabric anyway.

The arching part of the sole is made of several layers of cardboard (160 g/m2). I think I put 5-6 layers in these.

When making parts like this, you need to use glue that doesn't set right away. Start with two layers, spread glue on one and place the other on top of it. Then you form the desired shape and keep the pieces in that shape until the glue has dried enough to prevent the pieces from getting out of shape. Then glue the rest of the layers one layer at a time.

Then I glued the parts together. I noticed afterwards that it would have been better, if couple of the lowest cardboard layers had gone all the way down. It would have been easier to make the soles keep their shape that way.

I covered the shoes with fabric that I had treated with sealer. The heels are cut from thin metal pipe and the parts where they are attached to are made of modelling clay (the type that does not need to be oven baked).

I used the same fabric for inner soles and straps. I only used two straps for the shoes as the patterns of the fabric were decorative enough and there was no need for a more complicated design.

I covered the rest with the same fabric and glued small pieces of leather for taps and to the part that shows green in the picture below.

The picture below shows the finished shoes on the doll. I haven't tried it, but I don't think the doll could stand wearing these, because of balance issues.

Original Finnish post