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.

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.

Stiletto heels for Gooliope

This is one of the projects that have remained unfinished for a long time. The idea with these was to create resin soles that would require little additional work for finishing. Of course that didn't turn out to be true, because the painting alone took a lot of effort as these had to painted a bit at the time and using several coats.

The first thing I did was creating a universal sole (same for both left and right) using modeling clay. In this sole, there are holes on the sides for attaching the strap that goes over the toe part. For making the latex mold, the holes are not punched through, but just depressions in the modeling clay to make it easier to drill holes in the resin soles after casting.

In the picture above, the sole is attached to a piece of cardboard with double-sided tape for making a mold. A made two molds (below) to be able to cast a pair at the same time.

Latex molds aren't the best for resin casting, but I managed to cast several pairs using these molds. Below are two of those, and you can see on the leftmost sole that the holes on the side have been drilled through. In the master, I also made a depression for drilling a hole for the heel. In the rightmost sole, you can see a hole drilled there.

The next step was painting. I used enamel paints as they work best with resin. First I painted the inside with a light color as it will touch the doll's foot and I wanted to prevent any staining. I guess I could have left the inside unpainted as the resin is so light colored, but I thought painted inside looked neater. Then I painted the outside edges. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't smudge them, so I painted the outside in two parts to be able to let this first stage dry so that there was no risk of anything touching the paint.

Then I painted the undersides. I don't remember how many coats this needed, but I think it was at least three. With resin, the first coat is always a primer, because there is no way to get it to be even. Once you have one coat of paint, the next coats will stick much better and spread more evenly.

After all sides of the resin had been painted, I attached round wooden sticks as stiletto heels and painted them.

The strap going over the toe part is made of silver-colored plastic, and I used silver-colored thread to attach it in place. 

Here is one finished shoe. I have that plastic also in black and silver (I used that for Sybarite's shoes earlier), but that didn't look good with red. I think I might make another pair with that and soles painted with black and silver.

Finally, here are the shoes on Monster High Gooliope Jellington. They aren't a great fit, but they still look nice.

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.

Plaster casting with latex molds

The latest video is about making latex molds of heels for plaster casting.

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.

Part 2 of mold making

Here is the second part of my experiments with MoldMaker.

Making a mold for heels using MoldMaker

The following video shows my attempt on making heels using a mold made of mold making clay and also an experiment on making a two-part mold with the clay.


By the way, the word "mould" or "mold" is really bugging me, because of the two ways of writing it. I have decided to stick with "mold" from now on as that is what I am using in the book and because the clay is called MoldMaker.

First video tutorial

I just filmed the first video tutorial of the new series. It's about making latex moulds of a doll's feet.


The next video will be about using foot moulds to make castings.

New foot lasts

Going through the stuff inspired me to do something else as well. I decided to use the rest of the casting resin before it goes bad. The latex is also getting a bit thick, so it's better to use it as well. So, I'm making some more foot lasts.

All this has been done before and posted in this blog, but here are some photos anyway. The first one shows Sybarite's feet with flower tape around the ankles and several layers of latex applied.

The next one is Tonner's Jessica Rabbit (17" athletic body). First with flower tape covering the ankle joints...

...and then with latex applied.

Here are the finished moulds for both.

And here are the resin castings made with the moulds. You can see the flower tape clearly, but it is much neater than saran wrap.

As you can see in this photo showing the earlier plaster castings of Sybarite's feet and the new resin castings.

Making a master for a mould

I'm still making resin castings as 500 ml of resin is a lot for casting such small pieces. Finding out that latex moulds can be used with resin was really great, because I can make moulds for casting just one pair. You can't really use a special design, like the one for Monster High Nefera in the picture below, for a lot of shoes.

As you can see, the parts used for the master are really simple, just wooden and plastic beads, a round wooden stick (for keeping the heel parts together) and card stock. The main things are that the master lasts long enough to make the mould and that there are no openings between the parts for latex to get into (two coats of sealer will take care of that).

In the next picture, the master is attached to a base with clear mounting tape and two coats of sealer have been applied. This is for making the latex mould, which has been described in previous posts.

Here you can see the finished mould and the pair of castings. The part of the mould between the heel and sole needed to be cut a bit to remove the castings and turn the mould. Those parts of the sole were so close to each other that too much latex collected there when making the mould.

I also made a couple of pairs of soles for Miss Piggy. The masters for both designs were made of card stock (sole) and wood (heel). The Barbie wedge sole is included to show the scale.

With such a long and thin sole, it was necessary to have some extra support during the casting process. I removed the heel from the master and used the curved sole under the latex mould to ensure that the mould would keep the correct shape.

Fix for sticky silicone

On my first try of making silicone moulds, I got some problems with the hardener and parts of the mould remained sticky. This time, I tried to mix the hardener to the silicone more thoroughly, but still got some sticky parts. However, I found a fix for the problem. It occurred to me that as the hardener mixed in the silicone hardens it, hardener applied with a brush to the sticky surface should do the same. I tried it and it worked.

The uneven parts in the picture were the ones that remained sticky. They have a slightly different color, because the hardener is blue (to make it easier to see if it has been mixed in the silicone well enough).

Update on the book:

I have written most of the chapters about mould making and casting, plus quite a lot about materials. I currently have about 9,000 words written, plus 70 photos. There will be quite a lot of photos in the book, because it is so much easier to show things in pictures. It should also be easier for people with less than perfect command of English. The current plan is to have the book available only in English, although a Finnish version is also possible later, if I feel like translating the book and have time to do it.

The main change to the original plan is that I won't include any example projects. The book will be long enough with the other material. I'm thinking about a possibility of making another book later about example projects. First I need to get this one finished and see how much interest there is.

Tubular mould for a high heel sole

Latex is so much cheaper than silicone that I'm now trying to make all possible moulds using latex. Looking at a master for a high heel sole, I got an idea I just had to try. I thought that it would be possible to make a tubular mould using latex by placing the opening under the toe part and attaching the master to a support only from that place. The picture below explains this better than any words. I used a square piece of mounting tape to attach the master to the cardboard structure.

Then I applied several layers of latex, letting it dry before applying the next layer.

Here you can see the size of the opening. It is fairly large, because the entire master needs to fit through it.

This is the trickiest part of removing the mould. You need to roll the mould over the highest part of the master, because too much stretching could tear the latex at this stage.

Here is the mould turned right side out. I'm going to let it set for a few days before casting, because removing the castings will require a lot of stretching and I want to be sure the mould can take it.

It'll be interesting to see how this will work. I got the master out of the mould, so removing the castings should not be a problem. Getting air bubbles out of the heel could be a challenge, but I already have a theory on how to do that. We'll see how it works once I get to use the mould.

Unfinished projects

I've been doing some cleaning and there are a lot of unfinished projects, some of which may never be finished. I decided to collect some of them to this post.

First, a pair of Barbie stilettos, which were bright pink to start with. I painted them black using acrylic paint and then added sealer to prevent the paint from chipping. These are unfinished, because I haven't figured out what kind of straps to use and how to attach them.

Next, a pair of plaster castings for Monster High dolls. The first stage was making a master using balsa wood.

Here's the sanded and painted master with another one made of modeling clay.

Making the latex mould. If you want something else than a wedge sole with this technique, the easiest option is to make the back of the heel straight, so the opening can be placed there.

A pair of plaster soles right out of the mould.

Here after a few coats of paint. And that's how far this project has come.

Then another Monster High repaint. The next stage will be painting the round studs, but I've been postponing that, because I know how hard it will be with eyesight like mine.

The final one is an experiment with shrinking plastic. It's a thin sheet of plastic (white, opaque or transparent), which shrinks and hardens when you bake it in the oven. The first picture shows the piece I made to get the right measurements. The scale drawn in the piece of plastic was originally 3 cm long.

When you bake the pieces, they first curl and then straighten back. The result is flat, if the oven temperature is just right.

I used the plastic sheets to make the same kind of heels as in the shoes made entirely of cardboard. Far right is the pattern in the correct size, far left the pattern enlarged to take the shrinking into consideration, and in the middle is the baked plastic heel.

Here you can see the difference in thickness. The upper piece I'm holding is an unbaked sheet and the lower one is a baked piece.

I have also made the straight parts of soles for these and glued the heels into them, but that's where this project has stopped, at least for now. The next stage would be to make the inner soles, probably out of cardboard as usual.