Cardboard Shoe Progress

For the past week, I have started construction on creating a Doctor Marten boot using just cardboard box. There was and still is many challenges that I need to find a solution to. For example at the start of the project I needed to figure out a way of attaching parts of the shoe to the inner sole of the boot. I did think about stapling but after further thought, I realised that this would prove complex as there is not a lot of flexibility that a stapler can offer; this flexibility is what makes the project challenging. The cardboard is an item that is used for geometrical shapes not for organic looking forms. I fund that a combination of a type of glue called UHU Creative foam rubber and flexible materials glue (despite the name) proved an excellent way of securing the card into the shapes needed to create the foundations of the boot.

The creation of making the right shapes that fit the boot together was mostly guess work. I was constantly using my own pair of boots to find the shapes and sizes to create paper templates to use onto the card. Also the templates will be useful in the future as I plan to create boots from other materials such as metal.

To create the pieces needed to make the shoe, I used the same sheet of cardboard. After looking at this and taking into account a comment from one of my friends in the studio who said it looks like the plastic frame the parts to a airfix model comes in when it is in its box. I found it to be a prefect way of documentation of my process to the creation of the boot so far. I wrote some of my notes and measurements I made in my sketchbook onto the cardboard to show my working and off cuts that did not measure up to the actual piece when it came into play.