I was inspired by Aquilla429‘s simple tutorial about making shoe insoles to make 1:3 scale shoes fit DD feet better, and took photos to document a recent project I did. I pulled out a cute Volks outfit in preparation for a DD meetup this weekend, and recalled that the shoes and socks are horrible for staining. I plan to use a bodystocking under the socks, but the more preventative steps I can take to prevent staining – the better – so I decided to make insoles for these shoes.

Here are the offending shoes – the are from Moe’s Gothic Dress set and they are all black inside! T__T”

The last time I had a doll wearing this outfit for about 4 hours and she ended up with some nasty stains on the bottoms of her feet. Most of the stains were concentrated on pressure spots from where the doll was standing – so primarily the heels, balls of her feet and the toes. In most cases it’s pressure between socks and shoes that are the culprit, but since the inside of these shoes are black, it could also contribute to the problem.

Either way, I don’t want to have to deal with things like this (or worse!) again… >__<”

These are DD Rin Tohsaka’s feet, a bit stained from wearing her default socks and loafers.

So to make a little insole, I traced around the shape of the shoe on some thin tissue paper –

If you need to adjust the shape a bit, make as many outlines as needed, and then cut one out.

Slip the tissue cut-out into the shoe –

And check the fit. In my case, the tissue was bunching in the heel, which meant I needed to shorten the back of it. This is why I like using tissue for this “fitting” stage, because you can press it into the shoe and get a better idea of the fit.

After making the necessary size and shape adjustments, I traced out another pair of insoles onto white paper. At this point I also measured the insole against a DD foot to make sure it was as long (or longer) than the foot.

As I was studying the inside of these shoes I noticed something – Volks used a white PVC fabric to give shape and support on the inside vamp of the shoe! If they thought to use white there, why on earth didn’t they bother to make the soles in white too? Ugh!

Here I’m inserting the paper insoles into the shoe. Since the paper is thicker than tissue, it helps to curve the front of the insole to feed it into the shoe.

And here we have it! Nice white insoles so that your Dollfie Dream won’t get stains on her feet!

This is just a “quick-fix” since I only plan on having my DD girl wearing these shoes for a few hours. If you leave your doll wearing dark colour lined shoes for longer periods of time they could still stain, so be sure to take proper precautions.

– ♥ Archangeli