Shoes for Sybarite

I found some tiny stickers and wanted to use them for doll shoes. As I hadn't made anything for the Sybarite in a long time, I decided to use the resin soles I made some time ago.

First step was painting them. I used two tiny plastic cups and attached the soles to them with double-sided mounting tape to be able to paint all sides at once (except the insoles). I used Revell Enamel Paint number 04 for these.

Here is the sheet of stickers. You can't really see the scale, but the photos further below will make that clear.

For the uppers, I decided to use clear plastic. Below you can see the type of plastic I'm using for the doll shoes. It is soft and doesn't show any creases even after doing this:

The insoles have two layers of cardboard and one layer of leather, and I painted the edges.

The following photos show the order of attaching the stickers.

I even decided to put some on the insoles where they would remain visible.

After attaching all stickers, it was time to apply sealer. Again I attached the soles to the plastic cups to get even layer of sealer on all sides.

The uppers are very simple as there is no point doing anything very elaborate when using clear plastic alone (without any stickers).

I cut the pieces from the plastic and used the lines in the pattern to attach pieces of double-sided adhesive tape to the parts that go under the insole.

After making holes to the flaps, I attached the uppers. For more information on why I made the holes, see an earlier blog post.

Then I just needed to glue the insoles in place. Here are the finished shoes from several angles.

Fashion Doll Shoes in ipernity

I created a new group in ipernity. Obviously, it's called Fashion Doll Shoes. It is an open group for all photos of high heel fashion doll shoes, so if you're in ipernity and take photos of your dolls' shoes, you're welcome to add them to the group. The only limitations at the moment are that the shoes need to have high heels and the photos must be of the shoes, not entire dolls. Hopefully, there will be no need of any additional limitations.

Miscellaneous stuff

I haven't done anything new for a while, but there are some things from last year that I haven't posted yet. First pair is Monster High wedges made of Cernit/Fimo and some lace. The method of making the soles is the one explained in this blog post. These are very simple shoes with just the wedge soles, insoles made of cardboard and leather, and some lace.

I made these shoes specifically for the Grayscale Frankie and you can see her wearing them in the story The Not So Grim Reaper.

The next two are variations of the Leopard print shoes for Monster High dolls.

The last Monster High pair is made of what was left of the card-woven band I used for Nefera's shoes.

Finally, there's the first pair I've ever made for a Novi Stars doll, in this case, Una Verse. I made these to go together with a dress I crocheted for the doll using the same sewing threads as in the card-woven bands. Otherwise, they're just leather, cardboard, and pieces of wood for heels.

An old pair from 2007

I made these shoes for Madame Alexander's Cissy in 2007. These are among the first experiments I made with plaster casting soles.

I covered the soles with fabric.

Then I glued on some plastic decorations. The fabric had to be used partly to keep the plaster from chipping, partly because parts of the soles will always show between the decorations, no matter how carefully you place them.


Finally, I glued on the insoles and straps and covered the sides with sealer.


The shoes have been stored in a box with other pairs for several years now and the other day, when I took them out, I noticed this:

The sealer looks really bad. This is the only pair where this has happened. All the other ones, even the oldest, look fine, so I have no idea why it happened with these shoes. Could be a reaction between PVA glue and sealer.

The original Finnish blog post is here.

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.

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.