The Secret Material That Will Help You To Change Your Last Form

Finaly my shoemaking courses online started and now I have very busy daily schedule. I am not technical person and in the first week of courses I had too much unexpected technical issues that just got me off balance. One note to myself for the future, always work with professionals, it will save you a lot of time and health. Don’t worry I finally got on the right track with the help of my wonderful husband and everything working as I planned, in a very fast mode, but important thing is that it is working! In one of the first lessons that I made on the shoemaking platform I talk about one of the most wonderful materials that I found and use for shoemaking purposes and I want to mention it here on my blog as a treasure tip for all you shoemakers.
This wonderful material as epoxy glue. / A very useful update to this post! It called epoxy putty in US and you can find it in Home depot. Thank you Natasha/ It's soft like clay, and when you mix it well it becomes solid like a rock. Honestly this material is not intended for use in the footwear industry, but I found it very useful when
you have only one type of last and want to work with another last. For example you have round toe last and dream about pointy toe last to make classical pointy shoes. So in this situation the epoxy glue will be a perfect solution for you to change your last with it. The greatest thing that actually drove me to make an entire course about it is, that you can remove it from your last when you don't want pointy toe last anymore. It is removable, and that is what important. After it, if you want to change your rounded toe last to the square toe last, you can do it as well. Sure there is a method and technique working with this material, and you need to know how to make both lasts (right and left) identical , and I show it in my course.
I personally use the epoxy glue very often in my work when I want to experiment with
shapes of my existing lasts and change them. That’s why the first lesson in advanced level of my shoemaking courses I dedicated to this so useful and great ,in my opinion , theme. This method of changing you last's design will open your mind about the possibilities that you have with your existing last and you will have the appetite to create sometimes even bizarre forms of last ,as it happened to me. For example, I want to show you some of them, that I made first with epoxy glue and then copied them in plastic for bigger scale manufacturing.

  

This is the example of shoe design which I made for this "crazy" last.

It's only the beginning of my big program that I planned for my courses. During creating of each lesson I constantly emerging new ideas for courses, so stay in touch!

Do your last looks boring to you? What would you like to do with your last? What form would you like to create. Share your thoughts bellow in a comment, what last or shoes would you really want to create?

Please Visit The Only Shoemaking Courses Online Platform at: www.shoemakingcoursesonline.com

Have a great weekend,

Sveta Kletina

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Why I love Cristóbal Balenciaga!

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Why I love Cristóbal Balenciaga!

For nearly a year now, I cannot get designer Cristóbal Balenciaga out of my mind. To be completely honest, I did not know about him before that, but ever since I stumbled upon his works on the internet, I keep coming back for more. 

I was amazed by his collections of clothes, especially considering the fact that his career began in the 1930s. I will not mention here facts from his biography or list his numerous contributions to modeling and fashion in general.You can look it up your selves.. Instead, I will simply try to express my fascination with him. 

When thinking about his gowns, the only associations that come to mind are very poetic and colorful. The cut of his gowns is so accurate and masterfully executed, that it seems to me as they are some kind of streamlined living organisms. The lines of his designs are so vivid that they look like some sort  of wet animals, and that’s why each crease and detail in the fabric is accentuated even more.   

The  reason I began the discussion with the cut of the clothes and not their design and it is because in Balenciaga’s case, the cut is the design . There is not a single useless detail that isn't planned to be an  essential part of the cut. He is a Master of his craft not only because his creations are beautiful, but because this beauty was born out of the wish to create new dimensions in fashion while masterfully handling shapes using his unique sense of design.

Perhaps it is exactly due to his excellence as a designer and couturier that I fell in love with the Balenciaga 's works.

Some people go back to reading their favorite book or watching their favorite film in order to cheer themselves. I, on the other hand, go back to browsing Balenciaga’s works.

If uninspired or doubtful in regards to my latest design of shoes, I go back to Balenciaga's designs again and again to regenerate my spirits.

 

I am no expert, but in my opinion, Cristóbal Balenciaga is one of the forefathers of modern fashion design. Simply Look at the works of Galliano, McQueen or Yamamoto (also some of my favorite designers) and you will see the familiar Belenciaga lines . The silhouettes and the styles of our clothes have been created by him way back in the 1950’s!

Cristobal Balenciaga's dresses on my pinterest board

Once again, I must say that I am in awe of his art as a designer and a couturier. I think I'd like  to sign off with Balenciaga’s motto, which, I adopted and is now something I strive for: “a Couturier must be an architect for design, a sculptor for shape, a painter for color, a musician for harmony, and a philosopher for temperance”.  

PS: If anyone who has read this blog has any detailed information about Balenciaga that is not found on the internet, I’d be very thankful if he/she could share it with me.

Thank You.

svetakatalina@gmail.com

My website www.sk-shoes.com