Boots made of felt and modeling clay

The second Doll Shoe Projects book will be about making boots. This is one project that did not make it in the book, because things didn't go as planned. The yellow felt used for the uppers was already salvaged from another unsuccessful project. Probably should have just scrapped the whole thing, but I didn't want to throw all that felt away.

The pieces for the boots are simple, just the uppers and soles, both made of felt. The grey felt is made of recycled textiles and is 3 mm thick, so it's very stiff.

The first step was to glue the uppers to the edges of the soles. I used PVA glue for this. It works well when gluing pieces of felt together.

When the glue was dry, I sewed the front seams. The boots could be used like this, but my plan was to make the outer soles using modeling clay.

Here you can see the paper pattern on the left and a pattern cut from plastic on the right. The reason I was using a plastic pattern was that it's easier to get the modeling clay off from plastic after shaping the sole by pressing the clay against the pattern.

The clay I used was air-drying modelling foam, but any modeling clay would work. Actually, polymer clay would have been a better choice for the reason explained later in this post.

Here are the soles, shaped using the plastic pattern. I made them slightly bigger than the pattern, because air-drying clay tends to shrink.

Not big enough, it turned out. As you can see, the sole doesn't cover the entire insole and some gray remains visible. With polymer clay, this wouldn't be an issue as they don't shrink, at least not noticeably. At this point, I again considered scrapping the entire project, but decided to go on anyway just to see if this could still be salvaged.

I decided to glue some of that yellow felt to the soles to cover the gray felt. You get exactly the right shape by gluing a bigger piece first and then cutting off the excess.

The final stage was to glue the foam soles in place. I'm not sure I like how the seams between the uppers and foam soles look like, but at least the gray soles are hidden now. I may end up covering the seams with ribbon, but for now, these are good enough.

I've done all but one of the projects I intend to include in the book. The structure of the book is all planned, almost all photos are ready, and I have plenty of notes in Scrivener for writing the actual text. I'm aiming at getting most of it done before the end of the year, because I'll be very busy in January due to starting my studies. We'll see how that goes. The first book remained unfinished for a very long time.

I'm also waiting for a snowfall, because I plan to shoot the cover photos outside and snowy landscape would be perfect for that.

Soles and heels

Some time ago I had to get rid of some resin before it got bad, so I made some new masters for soles and heels. The soles were wedges, because those are much easier to handle when using latex molds. The master on the left is for Monster High Gooliope Jellington and the right one for 16" Miss Piggy.

Here are some of the soles I made after making the molds. The reddish sole in the middle has some glitter mixed in the casting resin. I wanted to see what that would look like. I'll probably just paint those soles when I use them for shoes. The clear sole isn't clear enough to my taste, so I guess clear resin should be used with silicone molds treated with wax.

The next one is a master for chunky heels. I haven't got any plans on how to use them, but I'm sure I'll come up with something

Another chunky heel, and yes, it's the right way up. Browsing books about shoes can give you some strange ideas.

As I had some transparent resin, I decided to try heels that could be filled with glitter or beads or some other small items. Master in the middle, two latex molds on the sides.

I'm not sure the heels are transparent enough, but maybe they'll work. Or they can be left empty and used as clear heels that were just made using a method that saves resin.

Shoes for Miss Piggy

I haven't been posting in this blog for a long time, but I'll try to continue now, like I'm continuing the Crafts blog. I haven't been making many doll shoes while I've been gone, but there are a couple of projects I've done since the last post that was actually about making doll shoes. I'll start with those before starting any new projects.

The first project is from 2017, shoes for the 16" Miss Piggy. These have resin cast soles, leather insoles, fabric uppers and foam clay on top of the fabric. The foam clay was a bit tricky to get to cover the fabric entirely as it didn't stick to the fabric properly.

I did my best, but there was no way to get the edges even. These were planned to be a closed toe design, although they look like sandals in the previous picture. The idea with this was that the toe part is much easier to shape when it's entirely made of the modeling clay. The only part that really needed additional support was the part going over the foot.

I used glitter glue for the edges where the resin sole was showing through a bit.

The result was neater this way, and the glue also makes sure the clay does not come loose on the edges.

Here are the shoes on Miss Piggy's feet.

I have been tempted to try making shoes that are entirely made of modeling clay, but I always have a hard time making two identical pieces of anything without using molds, so that problem needs to be sorted first, if I want to do it.

Sandals for Miss Piggy

The straps on these shoes are made of narrow card woven band. I used cotton yarn for that, so it is a bit thick, but as Piggy isn't as realistic as fashion dolls, deviation from the correct scale doesn't matter.

I used modeling clay for the outer soles, because the straps were so thick that this was the best way to deal with them. This clay is the sort that dries on its own and doesn't need to be baked. The reason for using that kind of clay is that the other parts of the shoes probably wouldn't like the heat and the soles need to be in place while drying to keep the correct shape.

The clay soles won't stick to the inner soles as you can see. Still, it is important to have them in place while shaping and drying them, so you get the indentations for the straps in correct places.

When the clay soles are entirely dry, you just glue them in place (PVA glue works well) and maybe sand them a little, if the surface isn't smooth enough. In this picture, you can also see the purpose of those flowers in the back straps. They cover the ends of the straps which have been glued together.

Finally, I painted the clay parts and the sides of the inner soles and applied a coat of sealer. The heels are made of polymer clay and I mixed the color myself. It's a bit lighter than the soles, but close enough.