Various types of shoes

The next part of my collection is yet again in a display case in my bookshelf. The top shelf contains shoes for Tonner's American Model, Jessica Rabbit and 16" Miss Piggy. The second shelf has shoes for Tonner's Agnes Dreary on the left, and two pairs for Mezco's Living Dead Dolls on the right. The small shoe in the middle is a charm that I cast using tin and a silicone mold. The third shelf has one pair (the yellow ones) for Rini and three pairs for Jolina by Zapf Creation, and the bottom row has one pair I made for Sybarite, plus her original shoes.

Here are the links to available blog posts:

Top shelf: first pair (Finnish blog), second pair, third pair, fourth pair

Second shelf: first pair & second pair, fourth pair

Third shelf: second pair (similar to the orange ones in the post about the third pair), third pair

Bottom shelf: first pair

More resin castings

As I was using the last of the resin as long as it was still usable, I decided to make some castings for boot making. For shoes, you only need the casting to be up to the doll's ankle, but I wanted to make boots for Gooliope. 16" dolls are especially difficult to handle when making shoes, so having just the leg below the knee makes things a lot easier. As I was going through the trouble, I thought I might as well make some others. The other doll in the picture below is a Living Dead Doll.

The picture shows how messy it is to create latex molds. Latex keeps dripping for some time after dipping the doll's feet to it, so you need some protection, in this case a newspaper, on the table.

At this point, I had to start calculating the amount of resin required, so I wouldn't have any resin mixed without having a mold to put it in. The easiest way to check the amount needed is to put some water in a measuring cup and put the doll's feet in it. The rise in the water level shows the amount needed. Unfortunately I didn't have a better measuring cup, so the numbers were only approximates, but that's better than nothing.

You also need to remember that if you're using resin with the ratio of 1:1 between resin and hardener, you need half of the measured amount of both. Elementary, but can be easy to forget when you keep thinking that one number you just measured.

The latex molds I made were fairly thin as you can see in the picture. They were only needed for one casting, so I didn't see any need to make them real sturdy. The third pair in the picture is for a My Little Pony Equestria Girls doll. 

Below are some castings waiting to harden. The big pair is for a 16" male doll by Robert Tonner. The ones with flat soles usually stay upright by themselves, but the Equestria girls molds needed some support, so I put them into a small plastic cup.

Finally, here are some hardened castings that have been removed from the molds. They still need to harden some more after removing them, although these are so thick that there was no risk of anything bending. When making shoe soles, it is important to always check immediately after removing them from the molds that the shape is correct, and if it is not, fix it as long as the resin is still soft enough to do it.

Shoes for a Living Dead Doll

The Living Dead Dolls have flat feet, so quite a lot of faking is necessary to make something with even a small heel. Here are soles consisting of two layers of cardboard, leather insole, toe part made of air-drying clay (with a little piece of leather preventing the foot from touching the colored clay), and a thick layer of cork.

The toe part of the upper is the first to be glued in place. The clay part helps stretching the leather tightly to prevent creases.

Here you can see the idea. The thick part made of cork makes it possible to make heels for the shoes, and this sort of faking also helps in making shoes that are more in scale with the doll (the doll's feet are much too short compared to the doll's height).

The rest of the upper goes in place next.

This part isn't necessary as you could just glue the outer soles in place and make stacked heels, but I wanted to try something different. So, I took pieces of the leather I used for the uppers, cut outer soles that were slightly larger than what I would have used normally, and glued them in place.

Then I sewed stitches all around, giving the impression that the soles were stitched in place.

Here's a closer look of the stitches.

After stitching, I trimmed the edges, glued the outer soles in place, trimmed those as well, and made stacked heels using the same leather as for the outer soles. Finally, I made the holes for laces and made laces using the same thread I used for stitching.

The shoes go on and off without opening the laces, so I put a little glue to the knots to prevent them from opening.

Shoe patterns on my web site

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

Patent leather shoes

These shoes are for a Living Dead Doll and they are made basically the same way as loafers for Anges Dreary. There are a couple of differences, though.

First, these shoes have a pronounced heel, although the insole is quite flat. This is achieved by gluing several layers of cardboard in the other end, but leaving the heel with only one or two layers.

The material is patent leather, which is thick, so the only way to make fairly invisible seams was to sew them. In Agnes' shoes, the back seam is glued, but with this material that was not an option. I treated the inside of the leather with sealer, because the Living Dead Dolls seem to be much more prone to staining than other dolls, probably because of the matte surface of these dolls.

Here are the uppers with all seams sewn. When gluing the back seam, I do that only after gluing a few tabs of the upper under the insole, but with sewing, you need to finish the back seam before any gluing.

This is how the finished shoes look like. In Agnes' shoes, there were only two layers of leather for the heel and even that caused some balance issues. Here there are four layers of fairly thick leather glued together to form the heel and the doll stays in balance just fine, because inside the shoe, the sole is flat and level.

The doll's feet are sort of wedge-shaped and the extra layers of cardboard do not make the shoes look in any way odd. In fact, the shoes look more normal than ones with entirely flat soles would look, because this structure corrects the shape of the feet.