shoe surgery (work in progress)

This post contains violent imagery, scenes of abuse and mutilation, so if you are of a sensitive character, please look away. And if you in any ways admire shoes, I strongly advise you to change the blog. This one is not for the faint and the feeble at heart.
It started at the post-office – the Emma Cook for Topshop wedges arrived! Knowing myself how I like to buy at once the entire outfit, I passed by a second-hand shop to get the new shoesies some friends, well, you’ll meet the belt and the bag later.
I fitted the shoes at home and was very disappointed, they were way too big, although I’m always size 6 at Topshop, my foot was slipping out because the cut was too straight, and most importantly I missed the fact that those are higher than 5 inches/12cm. Basically, I could stand in them, but with a first step I risked tripping over or losing my shoe…or both, the wedges were also very flat at the sole, so I could only stomp in them, not even walk. Gladly I was feeling rather lethargic due to lack of sleep and did not notice how a strange thought crept up: I wondered whether it is possible to cut the wedge down to a wearable height. Cutting at the bottom wouldn’t help – the arch curve is way too high anyways, so cutting at the top of the wedge looked like a solution…

Enter the knife.

I did a bit of shopping, but these are far from all tools I had to use. In the end I used a drill, a set of screw-driver heads, scissors, nail file, superglue, the wood cutter, screws, a large hairclip, manicure scissors, masking tape and a cleaning cream for leather.

Cutting down the wedge was surprisingly easy. The shoe was spitting dust; the wedge was lower, but…
I had a look on Luxirare earlier on to see how the shoes are made, and through all those fabulous images I missed out on the most important– the failed shoe. I only saw the importance of it when my shoe started to resemble it just a bit too much. I don’t know anything about the materials that are used for the soles and arches, but I had to drill a row of holes to be able to break the insole off – it’s almost 1cm thick!

Another issue was that the wedge got too small for the upper, so if you ever attempt something similar ( yet I really hope you don’t) you need to have a shoe at least 2 sizes up. Why? Well, as you pull the shoe down towards the new heel, it twists and becomes a size smaller. It would have fitted on top of the new wedge, but then I wouldn’t get in the shoes, so you can see that the upper is sticking out of the wedge, and there are some pull marks on the side. This is the best I could do stretching the leather after having removed the inner sole – don’t really have any pictures of that, as it was pretty intense and took two hours.
So the front came out intact, and the stretch marks are barely visible when I put the shoe on. The biggest problem here is the back, but tomorrow I shall pass by H&M to look for a golden belt of a sort. It would be nice to attach a pretty frilly strap made from a belt, and have the buckle fixed in place at the centre back, so that it gives more volume and hides well all the scars. So more on this shoe when I find a worthy golden strap and some studs to attach it… yet there’s the second shoe to pull through the shoe-hell – this will be my mission of the week.