Copying a real-life design

Some months ago, I saw an interesting design at a shoe store. I took a photo as I knew I'd want to try making these in doll size.

The first version is for Monster High dolls. I'm thinking of trying them for a bigger doll as well, because of the potential for better details.

I started by making the patterns. The pattern for the upper looks so strange that I actually had to write in it which way the sides are supposed to go. Next, I made the cardboard insoles.

Usually, I make the closing mechanism last, but this time, the shape of the upper made it really hard to get it to stay in the correct position for gluing, so I had to get it closed before gluing. It's a simple bead and hole mechanism again. That's easy to make and works really well with leather.

With that problem solved, I manage to glue the uppers in place (after gluing pieces of leather on top of the cardboard insoles).

Then I glued the straps to the uppers. The straps are from a card-woven band I used for another pair previously. I really wanted to have more straps, like in the shoes I photographed at the store, but the band was too wide for that.

Then I glued the straps under the insoles.

Because the materials used were quite thick, I decided to fill the gaps with leftover pieces to ensure that the outer soles would be even.

For the toe parts, I glued oversized pieces and trimmed them after the glue was dry.

Then I glued the outer soles in place.

I made the heels from round strips of wood, which I glued in place and painted brown. You can also paint first and glue afterwards, but when you glue the heels in place first, you can hold the entire shoe when painting, paint the entire heels at once, and it is easy to put them to dry so that the heels won't touch anything.

Here are the finished shoes on Clawdeen.

Transparent plastic

This was my first attempt of using transparent plastic for doll shoes. These are for Monster High dolls.

The plastic needs to be that soft and pliable, slightly stretchy variant. The piece I used was from a protective cover of a calendar, I think. The Create a Monster legs can be very handy for making shoes for the dolls, because they are easier to handle than the entire doll and more durable than plaster castings. The rows of pearls are sticker strips, which are easier to handle than separate stickers.

I started by making patterns for the required parts.

Then I made the insoles from two layers of cardboard and glued fabric on top.

This photo shows one finished insole and the other one waiting for some more gluing.

Cutting the upper pieces from plastic was a bit tricky as the patterns kept slipping from the plastic. I finally managed to cut all parts, but photographing them was the next challenge.

I didn't want totally transparent uppers, so I glued some pearls to the pieces.

Then I applied sealer to make sure the stickers won't fall off. Here are the pieces waiting for the sealer to dry.

When the pieces were dry, I used some double-sided adhesive tape to attach the ankle strap bottoms to each other. Then I made a hole to the part where they overlap. The toe straps also got tape and holes for the reason explained below.

Although double-sided tape is quite good at keeping the plastic pieces in place temporarily while you haven't glued the outer sole in place yet, I didn't trust it to be a permanent solution. That is why I made the holes in the plastic pieces. The holes need to go through the plastic and any tape there might be, so that when you glue the outer sole in place, it and the cardboard sole will be glued directly to each other in the places where the holes are. These "plugs" will stop the plastic pieces from sliding anywhere, especially as the outer sole and cardboard sole will be glued to each other on both sides of the plastic pieces. So, the plastic is locked in the correct position and cannot move anywhere.

For closing the ankle strap, I attached a small bead to the other side and made a hole to the end of the strap going across the ankle. I used transparent thread for the bead and secured the knot with glue.

This is the construction after gluing the outer soles in place.

My uncle left a big stash of wooden cigarrette holders and I've been finding various uses for them. This time I decided to try using them for heels.

I sawed and cut them to a suitable shape and used cardboard to close all openings. Before gluing the top shut, I actually filled the heels with sand to help them keep their shape.

Then I glued the heels in place and painted them.

Here are the shoes on my custom Create a Monster doll "Bee."

Shoes for 16" Miss Piggy

The basis for these shoes were plaster castings I had made some time ago. I glued the platform toe parts to cardboard soles that had 3 layers of cardboard glued in shape.

Next, I covered the sides of the toe parts with leather and filled gaps with leftover pieces to make sure that the outer soles would stay even when glued in place.

Then I covered the plaster casting heels with leather and glued them in place. Usually the heels are the last part to be glued, but I wanted to try a different method this time.

Then I covered with leather the edges that still had cardboard visible. The metal strip you can see in the photo is there to provide extra support to keep the arch in correct form. I don't use that a lot, but Piggy weighs more than smaller dolls, so some additional strength is a good idea.

For the closing mechanism I decided to try hook and eye, which turned out to be a bad idea as you can see later.

The straps are made of leather and the decorations are actually sticker strips with transparent background. Those are really easy to use for something like this. I covered the strips with glossy sealer just to be sure that nothing will fall off later.

The insoles are made of cardboard and covered with leather leaving some extra around the edges. I cut off the extra where the straps went, but in other places I turned it under the soles.

Here you can see the insoles with some sections already turned under.

The problem with hook and eye was that the end of the strap pointed to the side instead of going along the side of the foot. As I had already glued the pieces in place, I decided to fix this by cutting the hooks, pressing them flat and gluing the straps to the leather strips that held the hooks. So the result is no closing mechanism at all, but fortunately Miss Piggy's feet are different from most other dolls' feet and even shoes with fixed straps placed this high will be fine.

Finally, here are the finished shoes. The outer soles are finished with pieces of dark brown leather.

Shoes for Alvin Ailey Barbie

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Barbie has pointed toe feet, so very few Barbie shoes fit. I decided to try making shoes for her, although Barbie feet are a bit too small to my taste.

The first step was to make the insoles out of cardboard. As you can see here, I made a toe part for the sole, although it would be left empty. The shoes need to have closed toe to disguise this.

Next, I glued pieces of leather there, so the toe part would keep its form.

Here you can see the pieces in place. I could have printed the texts directly to the cardboard I used for insoles as it would have been neater than gluing separate texts in place, but as this was the first try, I didn't bother.

I used narrow strips of decorative band for the uppers. Using several narrow strips helps getting the correct form as they can overlap, if needed.

Here one half of the upper is ready and the other needs to be glued in place next.

I made the ankle straps using rubber bands the same way I used them for Barbie shoes once before.

Here are the finished shoes from front and side. The heels are made of round pieces of wood cut to a 45 degree angle on the other end and painted white. The outer soles are made of leather.

I'm not quite happy with the result, but for a first try, it is good enough. Also, I learned a few things that should be done a bit differently, so I will probably try another pair at a later date.

Ankle boots made of leather

These are similar to the white ankle boots I made earlier. The main difference is the material, which was leather this time. That meant that I could glue the seams instead of sewing.
 

I had lost the PDF file with the text I use in the insoles, so instead of trying to recreate that I decided to scan and use my own text (the original used a font available in Word 2007, but I had forgotten its name).

This photo shows the boot's upper part finished. Only the outer sole and heel are missing.

Here are the finished boots on Ghoulia. This method of buttoning the boots works very well, so I'm sure I will apply it to some other designs as well.

Repainted Draculaura's boots

It's been some time since my last post. I have mostly unfinished projects at the moment, but also a couple of finished ones, first one of which is this (these have been finished for some time, I just haven't posted the photos here).

As I bought two Draculauras, I had two pairs of her boots and decided to paint one pair. The first picture shows the boots with several coats of the basic color. Covering that bright pink requires a lot of coats when using a light color.

Next, some details in place.

The colors used so far are these.

The blue used for the strap is my own mix left over from a dollhouse project.

The finished boots sealed with satin sealer. It seems to be working well as I have put these on the doll's feet and taken them off several times without any problems. Same with the pair I repainted earlier.