Go team! Fright ! Fright! Hey, Frankie do I look alright?

Ready to cheer on the skrm or casket ball team? Maybe Lagoona needs some extra support to win her next swim meet. Whatever your favorite sport may be, Monster High is all about showing your ghoul spirit, and what better way then with a pair of spooktaculaur Spectra pep rally pumps?

What I used:

Pumps

Pink shoe paint

Blue tape

Newspaper

15 mm plastic chain links ( I used about 900 to cover a pair of size 6 shoes)

E-6000 glue (a full tube)

Toothpicks

Craft foam

White glue

Water

Black acrylic

Paint brushes

Heat source (ie stove top)

Sculpey mold maker

Large screw

Instamorph

Black Velcro

Large black plastic chain (1" wide links)

Scissors

Sandpaper

**I would strongly suggest trying to find a pair of pink pumps for this project.  My shoes were given to me for free, and a ghoul can't beat that price!**

  If the shoes need to be painted, start by taping off the soles with blue tape.  While Spectra's shoes are completely pink, it looks more professional if the soles aren't painted over.  Don't believe me? Take a look in your closet, how many shoes (excluding the black/tan/white ones) have matching coloured soles, not many~  Also tape around the inner edges of the shoe opening, and them fill them with newspaper, so paint won't get on the inside.

Clean off any dirt of oils left on your shows with a moist rag.  When the shoes are dry, take them to a well ventilated area, and give them a few coats of paint following the manufacture's instructions.  I like to use Nu life shoe paint, which works well for leather, pleathers and vinyls.  My shoes don't have glitter on them, its a flat holographic surface with some netting over it, so the paint adhered well.  I would not use shoes with chunky glitter glued to them for this project.  If your shoes are covered something else adjust your materials accordingly.

Once the shoes are dry it's time for the decorations~
The most important part in choosing your chains is to go with your aesthetic.  The chains on Spectra's shoes look really fat, almost like twist links, but my preference was to use link chain. For me, it conjures up more of a ghostly feeling.  I matched the width of the links to the width of the shoe's heel, so the shoes would have one row of chains up the side like Spectra's.  My chains came as individual links, and they had to be snapped together.  I made one long chain to start and broke it apart as needed.

When gluing the chain, I found it easiest to start with the heel, work to the center front, move to the opposite side heel, work my way back to the front, and then finally fill in the back. Phew. It's a fairly simple process, a line of glue, and a row of chains on top, but what isn't simple if getting the chains to stay neatly in place.  E-6000 dries fairly quickly, but not quickly enough.  Add that to the funky angles on a shoe, and it becomes quite challenging to wrangle all the chains.  I worked very slowly, only about 2-3 rows at a time, nudging the chains with a toothpick whenever they would fall out of place.  I found it most aesthetically pleasing to have the chains flat around the opening of the shoe, it looked a bit more tidy then having them alternate. Make sure to give the shoes plenty of drying time before starting on the other side. It may seem like a pain, but it is really hard not to bump the drying links.

The chain will round out the toe quite a bit, so it's ok if you start with shoes that have a pointy toe. 

 Once the chain are all on, move on to the ankle cuffs.  I decided to make mine a quick and inexpensive way with some craft foam sheeting.  There are lots and lots of great tutorials online for "craft foam armor," so I'm not going to go in depth on this.  I choose to work with the thickest craft foam, it comes in three widths.  Simply cut the foam with a pair of scissors to the desired length and width.  Mine are 1.75" wide and 9.5" long. Don't use a X-acto knife it can leave the cut edge uneven.

Carefully heat the foam strips over a stove top, and shape into a circle.  Let cool.  For thinner sheets of foam, I like to glue a layer of interfacing on the back. With the thick foam, I didn't feel it needed the extra support, so I skipped that step.

 Paint the surface of the foam with coats of watered down white glue, until the surface is smooth and the glue stops bubbling.  Once dry, coat the cuffs with black acrylic paint, usually I use around 2-3 coats.  Let the paint dry, and varnish with either gloss or matte, I chose gloss for a bit of added flair.

Next the cuffs need some detailing. If you look closely the little bumps around the cuffs are screw heads.  They can be made these a number of ways, one would be to just cuff off the tops of a bunch of screws, but that can make the cuffs heavy and be a bit dangerous.... I wanted light cuffs and all my fingers, so I made a mold using Sculpey mold maker.  Simply push the screw head into the clay as many times as you would like, bake according to the manufacturer's instructions, and just like that you have a lovely mold.

The mold can be used with a variety of mediums, but I had some Instamorph thermoplastic I wanted to try out.  Personally, I think it works really well and I love how quickly it dries.  I made 14 screw heads in a matter of minutes with my two molds.  The heads are light weight, easy to glue and paint.  I've made screw heads in the past using lightweight air dry clays, but it takes longer since the clay has to dry in the mold.  Oven bake clays can also be a pain, since they can loose their shape when pulled out of the mold.  It doesn't matter what perfectly imperfect material you use, just as long as you end up with 12 or so nice round screw heads (I always make extra).

Paint and varnish the screw heads before applying them to the cuffs.  If they are glued first, the paint can puddle around the glued edges leaving them looking a bit untidy. Using E-600, glue the screw heads around the ankle cuffs.  For the large half chains in the back, use two large plastic chains.  Cut off one end with scissors, sand down the rough edge, and glue them on.  Mine didn't need to be painted since they were already black. Set the whole thing aside to dry.
Finally cut three strips of velcro (two rough, one soft) glue them to the inside of the cuff with the rough side the velcro so it will face away from your skin.

With all that done, you are now ready to test out your fearleading skills~ or if you want to be dot dead gorgeous try using purple chains.