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.

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Foot lasts with modified toe part

Monster High Gooliope Jellington is a really good doll to make shoes for because of her foot size. And it's possible to make really high heeled shoes for her, unlike for Miss Piggy. I wanted to make foot lasts for Gooliope for making pointy toed shoes.

I started by shaping the bottom of the toe part using paper and glued those to plaster castings of the doll's feet. This ensures that the toe parts will be as identical as possible.

Then I used modeling clay to shape the toe parts. If you're only planning to make one or two pairs, this kind of foot lasts are fine for it, but I wanted something more durable. I wanted resin castings, so the process continued from this.

I attached the foot lasts to a piece of cardboard and painted them. The paint helps in making the surface more even, especially if you apply several coats.

After painting the lasts, I applied some glossy sealer on them to make sure the latex molds would be easy to remove. Latex is fine for resin casting especially when you only need to do the casting once.

Here are the final foot lasts. Resin is so hard that it will be easy to stretch the shoe material tightly around the toe part to have a smooth finish. Of course you'll need to fill the toe parts with some sort of stuffing once the shoes are ready to make the toe part keep its shape.

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.

Halloween special

I have been transforming some of the photo stories on my web site into ebooks, which are available for free on the same web site (dolls.fennotrans.fi). You can read the books with a reader compatible with .mobi files, such as the Kindle app. (To download it for free, go to the Kindle app download page.)

In addition to the Mad Hatter story, there are six free ebooks collecting the 6th Scale Stories for offline reading.

The Feline Clause is available now

The book is out for Kindle now and will be free for the first five days. starting from October 13th, 12 AM PDT. Just click the picture to go to the Amazon Kindle Store to download it. And if you don't have a Kindle device, the Kindle app is free and lets you read any Kindle books. You can download it from the Kindle app download page.

There will be a special offer on the doll shoe book (both English and Finnish versions) in amazon.com, running for the same time as the offer above. (For amazon.co.uk buyers only the English version will be on offer.)

If you're here too late for the launch offer, the Look Inside option on the store page will let you read the entire first chapter and a bit of the second one, so you can check, if the story interests you. If it does, you can always try Kindle Unlimited for free for a month. The Feline Clause will be in KDP Select for the first 90 days and will also be available in Kindle Unlimited for that same time. Click the link below to check the offer.

Kindle Unlimited Membership Plans

Update

This blog may have been neglected for a long time, but I'm still here, just not keeping up with a lot of things. Health issues have forced me to think carefully how I use the energy I have. Of course work comes first, and after that, there isn't huge amounts of energy left, so the blogs and my YouTube channel have been dormant for years.

Currently, I'm mostly active in Instagram (@dollphotostories), but I have also been writing a book that is connected to the "6th Scale Story" photo stories on my web site (dolls.fennotrans.fi). It will be a standalone story available as a short novel in the Amazon Kindle Store in October 2019. To keep up on the progress of the book and to get info on offers (I plan to make it free for the first few days after publication), follow me in Instagram.