I’ve been tasked to craft another shoe pendant similar to the one I’ve just managed to sell!

It took me a few weeks of struggle and handcrafting but it is now completed and I am quite happy with the result. I hope my Customer will be satisfied as well – check it out below:

The post Custom high heel filigree shoe pendant appeared first on Slavik LTD.

Suede inspiration

Apart from the obviously weird ones, more common shoes can totally bring a lot of unexpected inspiration. Like when browsing random Pinterest posts I noticed these beautiful green suede pointy toe stiletto sandals with an ankle strap. I admire these elegant lines and they make me want to create something similarly eye-catchy.

Backbone of the shoe

As I am not much of a shoemaker I rather try to catch this inspiration into silver. There are clearly 5 main parts to be crafted and then assembled together:

• sole
• heel block
• pointy toe
• back heel locker
• ankle strap

The most logical starting point is the sole which is pretty much a back bone of the shoe. I use a 1mm thick sterling silver plate and cut out a sole with a jeweller saw.

It takes ages to saw like a pro. Until that you have to refine the edges with a file or with a Dremel-like tool. I prefer doing it with a file as it gives more control and fine results.

Once you are happy with the shape and the situation not too rough around the edges you polish. Based on my previous project like High Heel Filigree Sandal with Carnelian Stone and Butterfly, High heel strappy sandals silver earrings with garnet stones and High heel filigree sandal with amethyst I can tell you that it is totally worth taking enough time to refine the sole to the mirror-like surface. It will be intrinsically harder to run this operation on a later stages of the project. Been there, done that – don’t recommend.

High heel mule

Unfortunately pictures of a heel making were lost in a process. But essentially it is fairly straightforward – you solder a big ball of silver on one side of the wire and burr it until it looks like a heel. I’m sure I described it in details in my previous high heel jewellery projects High Heel Filigree Sandal with Carnelian Stone and Butterfly and High heel strappy sandals silver earrings with garnet stones.

So I have a blank high heel mule. What’s next? Obviously the decoration. It is the very first time I challenged myself to craft a close toe tip. It might sound easy but bending silver wires in a such sophisticatedly shaped element requires hours to get it right. I used some wax I salvaged from the little babybel cheese snacks (yummm). I put a piece of paper on top of the sculpted wax and cut it to use as a pattern. Then I made a closed outline out of a 0.8mm wire and filled it in with the filigree filament. It was an easy part. Then it took me some bending, hammering and fitting to make it look nice on a shoe.

Back heel locker

Every time I have the mule done my inner voice whispers: “It kinda looks nice already. Let’s maybe stope here, hmm?”. Perhaps I could just add a jump ring and present is as a mule charm, but would it be a true fun? Not for me at least.

So the next element is the one that is supposed to hold the back of your foot from moving sideways while cat-walking. Some of the babybel wax leftovers were reshaped into a back part of a foot and placed on the mule. Then a paper pattern helped me shape a nice outline for the back heel locker.

I thought of reinforcing this elements with thicker wires as it will hold an ankle strap. But I’m a risky dude and decided to see if it would do fine as is. After filling it with the filigree and hammering it into shape I realised that the element is surprisingly strong. Probably because of curved edges act as stiffeners. It seems safe to solder all things together and get to the ankle strap crafting.

Ankle strap with buckle

I love the way the ankle strap looks with a buckle on that first pic from Pinterest. hence even though the buckle in my case will not have any real function I still want it there.

I start with making a simple ring out of 0.8mm wire and shaping it into a long rectangular. This rectangular is then filed with the filigree wires and closed into a ring. As my shoe is the right one I have to put a buckle in a way it looks right on a right shoe.

The biggest challenge here is not to melt the delicate buckle while soldering it to the strap. This is because the difference in how the heat dissipates in different components under the flame. After couple of failed attempts I actually left the buckle loose on at the strap. I did however solder it closed so it would go anywhere but it still can move around a little along the strap.

Final result

Once all the soldering is sone there was a lot of cleaning, sanding and polishing to ensure the fine look. But looking at the final result I realise it was all worth it!

Thank you for going through the crafting journey with me. If you are a shoe lover or you want to make one crazy happy – drop me a custom request and I will be thrilled to craft something unique for you.

Sold!

After quite some time sitting at my desk this incredible shoe has finally found its owner! A French lady contacted me few times asking about all kind of details and finally she said:

“J’ai craqué et je vais commander votre pendentif. Je le trouve trop beau.”

“I cracked and I’m going to order your pendant. I find it too beautiful.”

Thank God there are still people with great taste!

I hope she will enjoy wearing it!

Beautiful feedback

It took exactly 10 days for this shoe to get to its new home (kudos to Poczta Polska for a good delivery job). Based on the beautiful review I am incredibly proud to state that my artwork is appreciated!

The post High heels pointy toe silver filigree sandal appeared first on Slavik LTD.

Sole

Every silver shoe starts with a sole. Same as previously (like in High Heel Filigree Sandal with Carnelian Stone and Butterfly or Strappy high heeled pendant with garnet cabochon) I cut it out of a 1mm silver sheet. Interestingly enough I couldn’t find any template for a high heel sole so each time I draw it by hand. It would be an issue to craft a specific size shoe, thus it’s a good thing no one will wear those on their feet.

Once the first sole is sawed and rough edges are filed away I use it to make a pair. I draw an outline of the first sole on the sheet to saw a second one. This way it is easier to make pair of soles look very much alike.

Having both soles cut and polished it is a perfect moment to stamp my brand on them. Mainly because they are still flat. Once you bend them into a shoe shape the stamping task becomes hell of a lot more complicated. Ah, recently I got a new punch with a tiny 925 marking and I love how it presents itself right under the SL stamps.

Next step is to bend the sole into the shoe shape. It can be a bit difficult because you want your shoes to have sexy curves. I mostly do the bending by hand with a little help of nylon pliers not to damage the surface too much.

Heel

Once I’m happy with the soles shape it is time for the most tricky part of the shoe – the high heel itself. The heel is a complex pin with a flat angled surface on one end.

To produce the heel I first heat up and melt one end of a 1mm wire to form a bubble. Then I cut this bubble to fit the angle of the sole and solder it to a little D-shaped 1mm plate. It does look really ugly until it burred, filed and polished to its proper shape.

When the heel starts to look okay-ish I solder it to the sole to form a “slipper” which is a base for the future shoe. Based on previous experience I now use a longer piece of wire so I can adjust and equalise the heel hight for both shoes. Having both slippers looking alike is a huge successful milestone in this project.

Back heel holder

The leading design idea for this particular pair is to have few shoe straps to hold the stones. Pretty much like these gorgeous Cassandra high heel sandals from Saint Laurent. Not being too good at following the sketches I decided to model it out. I sculpted a little leg out of a candle wax and attached it to a slipper.

First decoration (and also structurally crucial) element of the shoe decoration is the back heel holder. I use paper stickies to cut out the shape for the heel holders and stick them onto the wax leg. Based on the paper template I saw them out of 0.8mm silver plate and anneal it to prepare for hammering.

Straps

Back heel holder also has rather complex geometry. I tried before to produce only with and tools and let me tell you – it is not a good idea. I am genuinely happy that I spent profit from selling my High Heel Filigree Sandal with Carnelian Stone and Butterfly on this micro dapping set! It is a perfect tool to form silver into curvy shapes and I was super excited to use it in this project.

With the heel holders soldered to the slippers it finally started to look like a proper pair of heels. Now it is time to add some straps!

Again the sticky notes came in very handy for modelling straps for my sandal. I just cut out thin stripes of paper and put them onto the wax leg to see how it would look. It also gave me an idea about where the stone saddle will sit and what are the attachment points.

Based on the paper templates I cut my 0.6×1.4mm flat wire into pieces and solder them one by one to each slipper. Once all the straps were in place I filed the attachment points for the stone saddles and soldered them right in. After all the soldering I left both shoes in the acid bath for some time for cleaning. It would be great to put them into the tumbler for a nice polishing, but I ain’t got one unfortunately. But my Dremel Micro with metal brushes and silicone discs also managed to do a good job. The result was actually better than I expected and I got so excited I almost started to set the sones!

Shackles

Happily though I managed to calm myself down and noticed that an important element is still missing – a shackle to connect an earring with a hook.

It would still be possible to do after the stones are set, but I prefer not to heat up the stones. This is risky as not all stones take heating positively. Some might change colour or even crack, hence it is a good habit to leave the stone setting as the very last step in making a jewellery masterpiece.

I took two tiny bits of my flat wire and bent them into micro jump rings. As this should be the very last soldering activity I used the super soft solder to preserve already existing solder joints. Also I clamp a shoe heel in a cross tweezer to dissipate the excessive heat while soldering the shackles. With shackles attached I went through another cycle of acid bathing and manual polishing to get ready for stone setting.

Stone setting

This is my first project I specifically purchased stones for. There is a local shop selling all kinds of precious and semi-precious stones, This is where I found these gorgeous garnet marquise stones and I knew exactly where to put them. Basically I did the entire shoe design around these marvellous garnets.

I choose to use bezel setting technique for this project as I find it the most neat and tidy way of exposing a beautiful stone. Prongs can sometime steal away some thunder away from the stone and I definitely didn’t want it here. Given that the high heel sandal is not the easiest shape to set the stone into I needed a smart way to firmly hold it in a vice. Most jewellers advise to use some sort of jewellery putty or sealing wax, but I can tell you that the polymorph plastics works great as well. You just melt it in a hot water, form it around your piece and let it cool down. Once hardened it is surprisingly strong and you can safely clamp it in a vice for bezel setting. After I finished setting stones into their saddles I gave the earrings another round of fine polishing. And let me tell you honestly – they look truly remarkable!

Exhibition

I hope you enjoyed following the manufacturing process and now it is time to check out the final result. This time I tried to spice things up a little and produce some artisan styled photos (at least in my mind they are). Thus I invite you to have a glimpse though the pictures below and enjoy the show!

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

The post High heel strappy sandals silver earrings appeared first on Slavik LTD.

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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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Intro

It is very satisfying that there are people out there who share the same passion. In my case this passion is elegant shoes and I found a way to express it in a form of jewellery. A friend of mine noticed my post in social media and contacted me right away to make an order. Motivated by the demand I set off to materialise a challenging idea I had in mind for quite a while – a high heel sandal with a butterfly wings inspired by Sophia Webster‘s incredible shoes.

High heel slipper

As any other silver shoe project (like this one or that one) I start with sawing a sole. I used a template from a previous high heel project that I am particularly happy about. Some say that the size of these pendants is too large to be delicate enough. Well, this is how I do my art and if you don’t like it – you’ve got the entire rest of the world to explore.

Although the sole is relatively easy to saw, making a good heel is far from trivial. Surely the silver casting would make it a lot easier but what’s the fun in that? The entire piece could have been casted in a mold and therefore loose its uniqueness.

So this time I started with melting one end of a piece of 2mm silver wire into a drop. Then I filed it down a bit and soldered on a piece of 1mm thick plate on top of it. First it looked rough but after some heavy grinding the result was actually better than I anticipated.

Once the heel is grinded to its rough shape I decided to attach it to the sole and do the fitting of the entire slipper. The trick I learned from mistakes is to make sure that the sole is polished as good as possible on this stage. Every new element on the shoe will not make polishing any easier. On the pic above you might notice the “S L” punched on the sole – it stands for SlavikLTD (in case you were wondering).

It is also important to use a hard solder on this stage. Otherwise if you use the same solder at all steps of building a piece you might find yourself getting angry about elements randomly detaching or misplacing during the heating operations. Once the heel is in its place there is usually a lot of redundant solder to remove and defects to file off.

Back heel holder

I was meaning to reproduce this element for a while. Some real sandals have this piece in the back of the shoe to hold a foot firmly. It seems to be easy to make in fabric but in my case it has to be a metal sheet.

I happened to have a small piece of fine silver sheet about 0.8mm thick and I saw it as a perfect fit for a job. After a few failed attempts to make a sort of a template out of paper I got annoyed and just cut out a triangular piece to start with. The difficulty here is that this element has a complex semi-spherical shape stretched to the top. It’s a shame I don’t posses any dapping punches as it would probably make this step a lot easier. This time I had to go old school and hammer the back piece on a round end of my little anvil. Although time consuming the process was satisfying and the result turned out to be more than all right.

Stone saddle

The slipper is ready even with a curvy back piece that makes me clap my hands when I see it. What’s next? Now it is time to think about a saddle for my mesmerising carnelian smooth marquise. I bought this stone in a local mineral shop for a few bucks only because it had an imperfection embedded in it. In my mind this inclusion makes it even more perfect.

A stone setting rule of thumb is to begin with a good saddle. I used a 0.6mm thick silver stripe to make an oval which tightly fits the stone. Then file the ends just a bit and solder the oval and add the support ting on one side. You will always be able to grind the saddle insides to fit your stone, but if you make it too big – you might as well start from scratch.

The stone saddle must be firmly connected to the shoe. I decided that three attachment points should be enough to hold it in place. The support frame is a sort of a v-shape which will be bent and have its ends soldered to the back heel holder.

Because there was no sketch (not on paper at least) I had to do a lot of fitting tries. This time luck was on my side as it appeared that the size was just right and there is no need to start over.

Before the final bending the saddle support frame I wanted to decorate it with filigree. It is way more convenient to do while the frame is still flat. Once you make your frame curved it becomes a nightmare to fit the filigree wire in it.

Once the filigree is in place it was time to add another important structural element – prongs. These are pieces of wire to hold the stone in its saddle. Learned my lesson in the High Heeled Amethyst Earrings this time I used thicker wire for prongs and attached them as two U-shape frames instead of four separate pieces of wire. then I bent the ends in the hoop and soldered the entire decoration component onto the shoe. So far it looks promising.

The butterfly

Inspired by a Sophia Webster winged shoes I was sure the butterfly wings will look awesome in a silver shoe as well. I did, however, had some doubts whether go forward with this idea because the shoe was already looking great after the rough polishing. In the end the curiosity took over the risk of screwing up a perfectly good pendant.

This time a sketch was rather necessary at least a rough one. I have come to realise that I have never sketched a butterfly before and it appeared to be nothing like straightforward. I ended up doing a research on butterflies and you would be surprised how many of them are out there. After a couple of hours and few sketch pages spent on butterflies I had a winner fitting perfectly to be sitting on a silver shoe.

Thanks to my engineering intuition I did spent a bit more time thinking through the whole assembly process. Otherwise I would most definitely ended up starting this element over and over. The trick is that the butterfly outline is initially made flat so that I can fill it in with filigree. After that it will be bent in half to spread its wings. That’s why I made the frame with a single piece of wire with both ends running parallel in the middle. I assume that with a single wire in the middle it would not be stiff enough and there might have been difficulties soldering it to the shoe.

The final assemble is always breathtaking as this is when all previous flaws usually appear. I was worried that during this operation I might overheat it and the heel or back heel holder will get misplaced. Luckily this time no major disaster happened, nothing that cannot be gently grinned away anyway.

Stone setting

Once all soldering operations are completed and rough polishing applied – that’s like almost the finish line. One of my bosses used to say that “if it 90% done – it’s done”. But in my case I thought it would be weird and irresponsible to spend so much effort crafting the saddle for a stone and leave it empty. The biggest difficulty here is that the shoe has a complex shape especially with a butterfly wings on its back which is not perfect to be clamped in a vice.

In order to preserve all the delicate parts of this pendant I decided to use a thermoplastic putty for stone setting. I put the beads into the boiling water where they melt into a single slime. This slime goes inside and around the pendant making sure the saddle is accessible. Once it cools off it gets impressively hard so that it can be safely clamped in a vice. It is now time to insert a stone in its place, maybe grind off a bit to get a perfect fit and bend the prongs to hold the stone firmly. Voila!

Final note to myself: even though the thermoplastic putty works great for the stone setting activities, removing its residue from tiny cavities of a complex shape pendant is a nightmare. Next time I do need to remember to think this step through more thorough.

Photoshoot

Many thanks to my lovely wife for taking those unbelievable pictures of the high heel filigree sandal pendant with a cornelian stone and silver butterfly. Enjoy!

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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

The post High Heel Filigree Sandal with Carnelian Stone and Butterfly appeared first on Slavik LTD.

Based on a previous successful sandal I decided to start with the steps as in Strappy high heeled pendant with garnet cabochon. I jigsawed a sole out of a 1 mm thick silver plate and chamfered out the lower edge. The heel was made in a brutally inefficient but straightforward method – I hanged a piece of 2 mm wire and melted its lower part into a ball. It does require a lot of filing though to get a good heel shape.

Once the sole is bent and heel is shaped I soldered them together into a “blank slipper”. This is what I call a sandal with no decoration attached. The first decorative element is the toe strap made out of a wire loop filled with filigree. It was a bit tricky to bend it into the right shape and then to solder it in place. It would be extremely helpful to have some sort of clay patty to hold complex surface elements in place while soldering – I’d need to consult with real jewellers about that.

The ankle strap seems to be more complex than the toe strap, but in practice it was not that bad. It is basically a rectangle frame of wire filled with filigree. In order to hold it firmly I left 2 ends of wire sticking out to act as additional support. I gently hammered it into a cylindrical shape and added a piece of flat stripe to attach it to the back of the slipper.

All piece came together and are ready for long hours of sanding and polishing. Seeing the outcome I feel it was all worth it and I only hope my friend will like her new pendant. Enjoy the photoshoot!

The new owner shared a picture of this pendant and she seems to be happy about it. However, it was pointed out that the shoe size might be a bit too large to fit her

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

The post Wide ankle strap filigree high heel pendant appeared first on Slavik LTD.

Sole making

As any other project it starts with a basic shape. In this case the shape is a shoe sole. This time I did go extra mile and outlined a sole of real high heeled sandal. Not being sure about the right scale of a future pendant I placed few outlines beside each other to compare.

I knew for sure that this shoe must be bigger than previous ones I made. The reason is simply because the flattened silver wire I have looks clumsy on a smaller sole. So I printed the scale sheet and cut out few outlines. It seemed that number 5 would be good enough.

Next step is to glue the paper sole to a silver plate. I have a nice 1mm thick silver sheet, which is perfect for this project. With a good jigsaw a sole appears in no time. Important point here is to give it a very good polish as you wouldn’t have access to the inner sole surface later on. Also it is much easier to accomplish while the sole is still flat.

Another trick is to grind off the edge on a lower sole surface. In engineering terms it is called fillet, but it is not crucial to keep a perfect radius around the entire circumference of the sole to make it look great. Once you happy with the fillet the sole is ready for the main bending. I use a pair of soft jaws pliers to protect the surface during this operation. Also it is important to remember to stamp a logo before the bending, in my case it is “SL” on the bottom of the sole.

Modelling the heel

Then comes the fun part – making a heel. The difficulty here is that the heel is geometrically complex object, which cannot be easily produced by basic operations like bending, flattening or sawing. This one requires moulding. Silver moulding is not easy to master at home, but there are shortcuts. I took a piece of candle wax, warmed it up in my hands and modelled a heel directly onto the sole.

After few iterations of the wax heel it finally looked good enough. So it was the time to make a mould. I used a common gypsum powder, the one you could find in any home appliance store. When the mixture was getting a sour creme consistency I stick the sole with wax heel right inside the gypsum cast. I gave a few days to dry and harden and then I heated it up with a blow torch, let the wax out and poured melted silver into the cavity.

Even though the result was not perfect it was still fine to go forward. I did realise that there will be a lot of grinding and filing to get to the shape of the shoe I envisioned.

It took some effort to grind all the imperfections off the homemade silver moulded heel. And even then I knew it would need more work. Nevertheless I decided to leave it to the latest phase of the project. I needed to connect the heel to the sole in order to proceed. Steel wire came very handy while soldering the pieces.

Decorating the slipper

I call a sole with soldered heel a “blank slipper”, which is a huge milestone in a project like this. If you can get it right – the next step should be easier. However, I figured that it might be a bit boring to decorate the slipper with only silver strips. So I decided to add a stone as a decoration. Luckily there was a lovely garnet cabochon in my stones collection which would fit perfectly onto a sandal I was making.

The aim was to make this miniature shoe a bit more realistic than my previous creations. Not like it will ever hold a foot in it, but I still wanted to get the details right. So I modelled a tiny leg out of the same wax I used for a heel before and attached it to the slipper. Now all the straps started to look much more vibrant and gave me a clearer visualisation how could it look like in the real life.

Soldering such small and complex pieces is always tricky. I had to scrap a lot of flattened wire to get all the soldering work right. When I completed the last joint I figured that it was a middle of a night, that’s how I got an idea to shoot a video of citric acid cleaning bath.

Setting the garnet

After a hot bath and few hours of filing off all the excessive pieces of straps all over it was a time for a final challenge. Setting stone in a bezel turned out be an extremely difficult process (if you want to get it right of course). My fellow goldsmith (a professional one) advised me to wrap the entire piece in hot sealing wax – the substance once used to seal royal correspondence. With no goof quality wax in hand I decided to improvise and use a thermoplastic polymer. It actually worked quite alright firmly holding all the delicate pieces intact while letting me put it into the vice.

I cannot say it all went smooth, but at the third attempt I managed to fixate the cabochon at its saddle. In the absence of an impact engraver (I hope to have one someday) I managed the whole bezel setting with tiny flat screwdriver and a hammer.

Voila

After the final touch of a fine grain polishing paste and brushing up in soapy water it was the happy ending of my story. Please enjoy the photoshoot and don’t be shy to share this with your friends!

Being so happy about finally have the spring sun I just couldn’t help myself and made a little clip. Enjoy!

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

The post Strappy high heeled pendant with garnet cabochon 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.

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

The post High-heeled sandal with clasp and filigree strap appeared first on Slavik LTD.

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

The post Delissy – Stiletto high heeled sandal pendant appeared first on Slavik LTD.

I’ve been alway fond of good shoes. Probably one of the reasons is that I used to be jealous of my schoolmates wearing cool branded sneakers, while I could hardly afford some cheap charlie boots for myself. Also once I had a chance to see how the real shoes are being produced on a shoe factory just outside my city.

Once I’ve stumbled upon an article about a craftsman who got seriously fascinated by shoes and dedicated his life designing the perfect footwear for women. This is where an idea popped in my head: if shoes can be that extraordinary – it might as well be an art!

It took me a long time to get over my doubts and commence this project. After a number of copper wire mockups it seemed more and more doable and finally I’ve got enough motivation to drive it forward.

The result was astonishing! I was so proud of myself that only after the polishing was finished I figured that no picture of the making process were taken.

I am now planning to create a whole series of shoe-like pendants and earrings (not yet sure how to design a high-heeled ring). Make sure to check this blog regularly and subscribe to my Instagram channel.

UPD: I run a lottery giveaway within my friends on Facebook where they could sign up anyone except themselves. The winner seems to be thrilled about her new pendant and here is what she shared upon receiving the prize!

I feel lucky to have a way to cause people smiles and make them a little bit happier

The post High-heeled filigree pendant appeared first on Slavik LTD.