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Captivated yet? Then let me take you through a process of handcrafting an elegant high heel shoe pendant with filigree straps and a wonderful amethyst triangular stone.

Sole

This is no secret that you have to start somewhere, preferably from the beginning (silly grin face). In the world of shoemaking, even silver ones, the starting point is the sole. I couldn’t find a decent blueprint of such shoe so I drew one myself. It might not be exactly proportional but in the end of the day I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feet.

I have a sheet of silver 1mm thick which makes an excellent base for silver shoes. The only thing you have to do is to saw the sole out of it. And then do some filing, burring or sanding depending on the tool of your choice.

When you are happy with the shape of the sole it is a good idea to make both surfaces flat and polish them. Believe me it is going to be much harder once the sole is bent (wise wizard face). This is also a perfect (and probably the only possible) moment to brand your jewellery piece with a steel punch. In my case I stamp SL as an abbreviation for Slavik LTD, which is the trademark I still contemplate to register officially.

Would you believe that crafting a heel itself is one the most complicated operations in this entire process? Well, you should. Unless you are good in melting and casting silver, it is going to take a lot of effort to carve a good stiletto. It is still an enormous struggle for me and would appreciate any idea you might have for simplify its manufacturing process.

Decoration

The centrepiece of all this is the amethyst I mentioned in the beginning. The saddle for it appeared to be straightforward – a flat 1.2mm wide stripe ring with filigree basement will hold the stone firmly. Even though it fits tightly I added another loop of 0.6 wire around the saddle and three chunks of the same 1.2mm stripe to make sure the cabochon is not going anywhere.

The idea is to set the stone in the front side of the shoe. In order to do that the saddle needs to be solidly attached to the shoe sole somehow. And it must looks elegant of course. So I bent a piece of 0.6mm wire into a kinda-monkey-looking shape leaving enough space in the middle for a saddle. This shape provides 5 connection points to the shoe which should be enough to ensure the structure stability.

Fine silver wire is very flexible and needs reinforcement to keep the shape. I added few wire loops above and beyond to solder the saddle in the centre. The blank spaces were practically asking me to fill them with filigree. I am not strong enough to reject that so ended up with putting filigree in every strap.

When the monkey-shape was soldered, cleaned and polished it was time for a final assemble. This is by far the most thrilling phase of the silver shoemaking process. Mostly it’s due to the complexity of the shape it is extremely difficult to control heat dissipation while soldering pieces together. And lack of such control leads straight into previously soldered pieces start to live their own lives with twists and shifts.

Happily this time I got lucky to have all parts attached together with no bigger adventures. Which let me focus on the most satisfying operations in jewellery making – setting the stone. With a saddle prepared earlier it is a matter of levelling the cabochon and carefully bending the prongs to hold it tightly.

Exhibition

Once stone is on its rightful place the whole thing was meticulously polished and bathed in the ultrasonic cleaner. A final touch with attaching a jump ring on the back and voila – the elegant silver high heel sandal with filigree elements and a gorgeous triangular amethyst is ready to reveal itself to the world. Either as a necklace or a piece of art!

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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The post High heel filigree sandal with amethyst appeared first on Slavik LTD.

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Making soles

Based on the experience I gained so far it seems obvious that any shoe making starts from the sole. So I just borrowed my wife’s real life sandals and outlined approximately the shape of the sole on a post-it note. This convenient as the post-it then sticks well to silver during the next step.

As a sort of an optimisation freak I had an idea of sawing 2 soles simultaneously. Spoiler alert – don’t try this approach and stick to the normal cutting by a jeweller saw. Besides, it is also a lot of fun!

I started to kinda like the sawing process. Once you get your hand on it it is impressive how precise the cut can be. This is nothing like sawing the wood – you can trust my word on that.

Once both blanks are cut to the shape they gotta be filed to fit each other. This is where my optimisation passion pays off – I clamped both soles together and grind them to the final shape.

I figured that the process is getting easier when the blanks are equally levelled. A tiny anvil and a bit of hammering do the flattening very well.

Once I was happy with the shape of my soles I filed down all the edge on one side. This trick gave a nice nifty touch to the soles, which made a huge difference to the overall sandals design.

It was definitely a good idea to flatten the soles once again and polish them from both sides. Because the next step was the bending. Once bent it would take hell lot more time to get the same shiny effect on the soles surface.

Mounting heels

The hardest part of the tiny shoe making is to produce a good looking and fine fitting heel. It took me several attempts and lot of hours trying to get it right without metal casting experience as well as equipment.

In my first iteration I tried a technique used for making pins. A piece of wire hangs a bit above the heating brick and flame heat up its lower end. Wire melts on one side forming a droplet which should be easy to file down to a heel shape. The problem I discovered was that it makes a weak spot where wire and a droplet are joined. Even though I was being careful it broke both times I tried to shape it with a file.

Until I am ready for real silver casting, there is another way to make a spike heel. I used it before and it seemed to work fine, even though it is far from perfect. The idea is extremely simple – I carved out a rough heel shaped hole in my coal heating brick and melt silver scraps right on top of it. As a result I got a strong solid piece, but it required a lot of afterwork to make it look nice.

A friend of mine, an experienced dental specialist, offered to help me out with metal casting. It seems like a great next challenge in my jewellery adventure, but I decided to complete this project in the old school fully manual way. And to be honest I think it went quite well – I was even offered to sell one of those blank slippers as a pendant.

Decorating the slippers

The offer turned out to be not too serious after all, so I started to prepare myself for the next phase. Even though the high heeled slippers look surprisingly good I did have in mind to decorate them. And this time I was determined to set some stones.

I’ve got a couple of tiny cute amethyst marquises in my mineral collection, which are perfect for the occasion. Small and semi transparent they would look lovely on the silver sandals. Having a hard time trying to sketch out a design I decided to go with a flow and try ideas along the way.

To boost my imagination I even carved a tiny leg out of a polymer clay (first time I ever tried it). Although it looked a little creepy it did help me to figure out the overall pattern I was after. I imagined that the shoe will have a toe strap, an ankle strap and an amethyst set between them. To make sure it will all work I needed a reference point, hence I started with a setting frame for the stone.

There was nothing supernatural – just a loop made out of a 1.2mm strip and some filigree to keep the stone from the bottom. During the fitting it al on the tiny fake leg I figured that the setting frame is a tad short and it will skew all the straps. Naturally I needed to add something around as an extension. My eye got caught by a piece of twisted silver wire scrapped from a previous project. Mental note to myself: spirals can consume a lot of solder unless you fit them properly to the frame.

It is interesting that when my excitement goes a tiny bit over the top something happens. I was grinding the inside of the setting frame to make sure the amethyst will sit there comfortably and put it in its saddle on and off like hundred times. And all of a sudden there was a sound no jeweller ever wants to hear – crack. Damn. Snap, back to reality (cheers, Eminem). This was pure luck that I had another amethyst just like the broken one. However, the setting frame was no good for it and I had to start over.

For those who know me close enough it won’t be a surprise that I adore tiny micro things. So here was my chance to produce one of those – a tiny clasp for the ankle strap. I have done it once in a previous project and I must proudly confess that I’m getting better at this. Oh, come on you gotta admit – this is cool! And freaking cute!

Another little trick I figured during the final assembly of all elements. The setting frame for my amethyst marquise needed to be equipped with prong to hold the stone tight. Since the whole idea of these earrings is to be fragile and delicate I made the prongs out of the thinest wire I had in stock. If I’d cut the prongs prior to soldering it would have been quite tricky to get them attached properly. Hence, the hack is to bend a longer chunk of wire in a shaсkle and solder it as a whole. This way heat from the torch dissipates evenly and solder doesn’t flow all over the place.

Enjoy the show

I was kinda worried that it would be a challenge to make a second earring looking similar to the first one. It turned out to be somewhat true as I fully completed one earring first. Only after I was happy with the result I started the second shoe. But the fact that I didn’t have an initial design sketch came in handy as I just used the first earring as a guide for another one.

In any case I wish you to enjoy the photoshoot below and I hope it’ll give you an inspiration to pursue your own passion. Have fun!

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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

Check my Instagram or DM me through Etsy if you want to keep in touch.

The post Alemanas – High Heeled Amethyst Earrings appeared first on Slavik LTD.