The inspiration for this high heel sandal hit me when I was wondering around a Warsaw airport waiting for my connection flight. There was a Victoria’s Secret store with their catwalk show on a loop on giant screens all over the place. Even though the ladies don’t wear much on those events, their gorgeous shoes just couldn’t go unnoticed. I did some googling and it appeared that they mostly used Christian Louboutin and Pura Lopez heels for their models to walk around that season. I chose the ones I liked the most and merged them together in my sketch book.
I was looking for some extra motivation to start crafting. When I shared the the filigree sandal I made earlier on my social media it came as a bit of a mixed feedback about the very concept of shoe shaped jewellery. Some of my facebook friends’ opinions were drastically different: from “The beautifulest thing ever!” to “What a crappy idea – go do normal jewelry instead!”. But as some people say – if you’ve got no haters you probably doing it wrong.
Hence, getting over my inner doubts I push forward with this design. Also it is an excellent opportunity to improve my sawing skills. It took me quite a few broken blades and whole lot of sweat and tears last time to make one sole. This time, however, it went much better – many thanks to my good friend for some handy tips about fine saw.
Even though the filigree shoe sole looks very nice I still wish to get more realistic effect. That’s why I’m experimenting with solid sole cut from a 1mm thick silver stripe. I figured that the better cutting work the less filing you have to do afterwards. Not my case yet – still had to file down a lot of flaws around the sole.
Making a spiky heel piece turned out to be way more difficult than I thought it would be. unfortunately no pictures were taken, but it was my first attempt in liquid metal casting. I cut a groove in my soldering block, put some silver chips and melted it to fill the groove. It did look ugly and bumpy, but few hours of filing shaped it to a decent looking heel!
Once sole is connected with its heel it is time to add straps. These straps are supposed to hold the foot in the real shoe, in my case I leave it to imagination. With no sketch or plan I just cut some wires and solder them to the sole imagining how the foot would like in it.
Luckily this shoe will never cause you any discomfort wearing it, as long as you don’t step on it. Only after a few pictures I realised that there is no hook to put this shoe on a necklace or a bracelet (or even better – on an anklet).
A piece of silver wire bend into an elegant hoop, soldered to the back of the sandal and voila!
After the final polishing I am quite satisfied with the result. Another elegant high heeled sandal is ready for its glamorous red carpet walk.
This piece is still available for purchase. If you are interested please visit my Etsy Store or send me a DM in my Instagram to talk business 🙂
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