Nina's

Ladies & Gents! After several months of waiting and about 90 pure handmade working hours; I'm proud to present the newest creation by yours truly! A project for the amazingly beautiful Niina, from the fashion blog Nelliinan vaatehuone.

*Drum roll...*

Nina's

I think I was quite obedient to the original drawing, though some changes did occur. Naturally :)

Taken from her blog (28.2.2012): here.

Taken from her blog (26.10.2012): here.

Materials:

• Collar: Black suede with a black sheep nappa lining
• Bow: Black patent leather ring with black alcantara bows.
• Uppers: Cream white nubuck, Black patent leather.
• Heel: Black patent leather covered plastic heel.
• Sole: Vegetable tanned leather with an black 4mm rubber half sole.

What can I say? Well, I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome, being my first bespoke high heels... I'd say I'm REALLY pleased. There's a million little things that could've gone better, but then again a million little things that I learned. So that's a alot! 

I'll update images of Niina wearing them from her posts later on.
One can only say: Tally hooooo!

Ready, steady, why ain't they ready... already?

Whoops! It's time to take a look at what's happened during the past week. I got another project request from a possible client: mid to high heel black boots with a twist of rock 'n roll. So I started drawing:

I made three designs on an convenient A4 size with an explanatory text portion and a neat small blueprint to help understand how different materials are divided.

And here's all three of them. I also made a special heel versions of these as requested by the client, but I'll show it to you all later when we've finalized the design. So far the one on the right is leading, but it'll go through some serious changes.

After work, it was good to test something that's been boggling my mind recently: to make french patina shoes. It's a traditional method of producing high end dress shoes (NOT the only one, though): you make the shoes normally but use a traditional vegetable tanned leather to make the uppers. The same as you use to make Lapikkaat, which are very familiar to all you Finns. You last them normally like on the leftmost shoe. Then you apply leather dye with a cloth as is done on the middle shoe. After drying it's burnishing, oiling and waxing. This way the colors get a deep tone to them, and the surface looks alive instead of even and plastic-like.

I'll still make new patterns and a new mockup of Niina's shoes, since I'm not very satisfied with the current situation.

The Paubellarinas

Inspiration can happen anytime. Whether sitting in a bus, doing work or watching opera, anywhere. This time my inspiration was a blog, maybe the first fashion blog I've ever gone to: Paubellas. I wanted to dedicate these shoes for her and her blog with their name: The Paubellarinas. My first comment in history was about some ballerinas she wore, and I started to ramble about how I couldn't understand them for the sheer reason on non-aesthetics that I thought flat shoes in general possess. Well, I got her sympathy for not understanding women in this issue, but a moment later some designs for ballerinas started whirling in my mind. So I drew them down, and decided to start a project in making a pair. And here they are ready. Such is inspiration.

These were done bespoke for my wife, who also keeps a lovely and successful children's clothing blog called Unikuun terapiahuone, with lots of elaborate applications and tailoring, check it out! She was very pleased, which was a relief since I didn't let her affect the design. Except in one thing, as you'll see in a moment:

The main ingredients: Calf leather and alcantara (synthetic) uppers. Full Goat leather lining. Colored red leather sole with rubber inserts.

And there's the wish my client had: to have a heart shaped something in the soles.

The signatured red soles. I know it's a rip-off from Christian Louboutin, but they just look sooo good :D

Thank you all so much for following this project! What should I do next? High heels? What would YOU like to see made?

Making Ballerinas - Part 9 The outer sole

Making the outer soles can be sometimes frustrating: You're so close to completion of the shoes and then you start to get anxious and impatient, especially when all the time you have is basically the late evening/night, so you want to finish them quickly. Well, they turned out ok after all. But I still feel I could've done them better: lots of little details were left ugly and proper tools are missing. Making outer soles is alot about finishing, and when you're dealing with leather one has to pay great attention to details, unless you're just gonna paint it all black.
Enough blabbing my mouth, let's cut to the chase:

Here it all begins: I removed the nails and cut the excess leather out  from the undergoing uppers and lining. Then I cut two shanks out of carbon-fibre plate, and cork fillings.

Everything grinded and ready to take on the outer sole.

On the left is a glued, compressed and shaped outer sole with two shaping chisels. The left shoe has it's glued and skived outer sole waiting to be pressed.

A close up of the pressed on logo

I've fallen in love with the red soles, so I'm at it again.

Coloured. Still a bit wet though.

The formed half soles and heel rubbers with the grinded outer soles ready to be glued.

I want to reveal the outcome of the soles later, so next up was pulling the nails out from the lining.

I removed the lasts and made insole linings with the logo print.

And it was time to spread some polish, spray some care products, polish and oil the outer sole.

Sorry all this hidden mystery in the post, but I wanted to save up the details and everything to the actual reveal. Which is tomorrow! See you then!

Yenni

As my first official post, you see a pair of shoes that I made to a friend. They're truly bespoke, with full leather lining and uppers, wooden leather covered heel that I sculpted and a leather sole. This was a visionary project given as a surprise birthday gift to a friend <3