Continuing the theme with shoe-like jewellery here is a third high-heeled sandal I have completed so far. Its predecessors are High-heeled filigree pendant and Stiletto high heeled sandal pendant. This time I used a solid sole and added a clasp and a filigree toe strap.
Jigsawing
As in any shoe the works starts with a sole. To keep proportions fairly in place I borrowed few real life sandals from my wife’s collection. I did my best trying to reverse engineer a real shoe into the sketch on a sticky note.
At the time the only solid silver material I had was a piece of 8×1 mm stripe so I had to fit the sketch within its boundaries. I cut the paper sole and glued it onto the stripe and seemed to be ready for sawing.
Honestly I thought it’s gonna be much easier exercise. Probably because the only jigsaw experience I had was many years ago in school where we were making a birdhouse out of a plywood.
Nevertheless I managed to get the sawing started. And let me say it went fairly smooth and I started to enjoy the process. But sure enough this feeling didn’t last – the blade broke and kicked my confidence right in the guts.
After a bit of emotional struggle and few broken blades I did manage to finish the cut. Well, it was not too bad for a bird house builder and I celebrated this little victory with a nice cup of coffee.
Sole shaping
Let me tell you a little secret I discovered during my jigsawing exercise. The better cut you produce – the less filing you gonna have to do on the piece. In my case the edge looked like it was brutally torn rather than cut with a saw.
Surely I had to do something about it to ensure my good night sleep. As in the old russian anecdote I just armed myself with various files and smooth out all the flaws around the piece.
Once happy with the condition of the sole it had to be curved into its elegant stiletto shape. Surprisingly it was not hard at all after I heated the piece and rapidly quenched it. This operation makes silver way more flexible and easy to work with. I used few pliers with plastic covers to leave no marks on silver surface.
Making the heel
Little did I know that crafting a life looking heel would become such an immense challenge. I used to work with silver wires and a heel is nothing but a straight spiky piece of wire, ain’t it? Well, not even close! I did my technical due diligence and figured that shape of a heel is an engineering nightmare. At least the stiletto type I was after.
There basically 2 parts of a heel: a heel neck (long slim rod) and the heel itself (sort of a stump between heel neck and a sole). I’ve started with a chunk of a 2 mm wire, which obviously too thick for a heel neck, but not enough for a nice heel. So I added a ring on top of the soon-to-be heel and soldered it together.
The outcome I got was ugly and looked more like an WWII grenade rather than an elegant and delicate heel I was up to. Thankfully some millenia ago a file tool has been invented which gave me a chance to turn my grenade into a lovely heel.
Shoe assembling
So far it was going really good but incredibly slow. In my pursuit of a lifelike miniature I had to repeat some of the building operations over and over again. But at some point one should state that enough is enough and move forward.
At this point I had prepared all parts to build a fundament for a sandal. It was only a matter of fusing a sole with its heel. It was one of the points where I screwed up the soldering and had to produce another heel.
Finally after long hours of fitting, soldering and re-soldering the high heeled sandal started to emerge in its glorious shape. This by itself was a big victory for me, but it was merely a half-way until the checkered flag.
Decorating
I am fascinated with filigree art. I also got lucky to know just a guy who produces silver supplies for this line of craft. It is only natural that my true desire is to decorate everything with this mesmerising twisted wire technique.
Interestingly enough I realised that it takes me a lot of effort to transfer a vision of this sort of work into a sketch. On top of that having a sketch doesn’t help but vice versa. So I just dove in and started to bend wires on the fly. First was the toe strap. I made an oval, filled it in with filigree and cut it to fit the sole. Already then I was proud of myself as the shoe started to look like a real one reminding those fancy high heeled flip-flops.
Right at that happy moment it hit me – there must be a clasp on an ankle strap. It was so clear and beautiful in my head, it’s a shame my skills are still poor to reproduce it. But even with what I did manage to craft I was truly happy with the decoration bits.
My engineering background whispered that there might be a stability and stiffness issue. I didn’t argue much and added a silver stripe connecting the toe strap with an ankle strap. At the back of the shoe I added another strap with a chain loop (it is a pendant after all).
Showtime
After all the soldering the shoe is getting a warm pickle bath to get rid of debris and flux residue. Once it comes out of it there are sanding and polishing procedures to make it shiny and glorious. Final rinse and its ready for its first photo shoot – enjoy the gallery below!
Unfortunately, this item is not available for purchase. If you dream about something similar, please check my Etsy store or contact me through the form or on Instagram and let’s see what I can do 🙂
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