Sunday, August 28, 2016

Designing Barbie Doll Shoes

I love designing, crafting, or creating things in small scale. It's very challenging, but small details are so amazing. I've been collecting Barbie dolls, fashion doll shoes, and sewing Barbie doll clothes for over 5 years, it's a wonderful relaxing hobby for a creative like myself, always something new and exciting to learn. So, shoes, absolutely love them, I use to collect them when I was working, I think I had enough to wear a different pair for every day of the year, I'm the same way with Barbie shoes, I can't collect like I want to, as they are expensive, they even have these handmade fashion doll shoes, with a faux leather, trimmings zippers, etc. I have no idea how they do 'em, So I stay in my own lane I found a way to have plenty of Barbie doll shoes, to decorate them differently with paints and studs, I'm still looking for more things to do but for now this idea works. I use acrylic paints, I started with the tubes where you have to mix with water, but I could never get the right consistency, the shoes come out sticky and the collected dust and everything. Then I tried paint markers, it was a pack of 5 colors, black, red, white, green and silver, that I had gotten from Michael's, they were really cool, so I took to the computer to look for more, I found them at Walmart. The tip wasn't as fine as the ones at Michael's but they worked on some of the shoes ( you'll see the photos), but as usual I over bought and doll shoes are small and they can't all be decorated, so after a while, storing the markers in an upward position, the tips got hard on most of them and the became un-usable. So looking for paints again I saw these Martha Stewart already mixed metallic paints, I got 4 colors, silver, gold, bronze, and copper, also I bought some small doll painting brushes, all from Walmart, this works well it's the only thing I use, you can apply more coats for better coverage and the finish is good. This is not a how-to, as you will see from the photos what I did was pretty simple, I will explain in some of the photos how something was applied and how many coats of paint was being used.

Children - before starting any project please consult parents or an adult      



These are the paints and brushes

Here's my doll shoes



About 3 coats were added, that's about how many with most of the shoes, sometimes the lighter the shoes were the more coats I'd have to use


These I added small rhinestones w/ glue after about 3 coats of paint, after the stones dried I put another coat of glue to secure.









These were done with the paint markers
















these have hot fix stud added, I wouldn't suggest as this was complicated and it could possibly come off since I can't double secure it












One more thing, I am not a writer, so please do not judge my grammar, this is a way for me to keep up with my own information and hopefully help someone in the process.

If you have any questions, or if I've missed anything please let me know