Footpaw How-to

          Here's a how-to on how I do my footpaws for my costumes. Its very simple to do and you only need a few "ingredients" and a little bit of time to make wonderful plantigrade footpaws that last! Making foot paws is also good practice for carving foam and applying fake fur, techniques learned that can be later used on a mask!

• Supplies:
  • Faux fur, you probably won't need more than a half a yard.
  • Canvas shoes (or old shoes)
  • Hot glue and glue gun
  • Upholstery foam (you can get it by the sheet or roll at Jo-Ann's fabrics and other places).
  • Scissors and razor blade
  • Shoe Goo (found in the shoe department for shoe repairs)
• Optional Supplies:
  • Sculpey clay, or plastic claws (to use as toenails)
    • You can purchase some claws (just like the ones pictured) in many colors from Grey Owl Crafts.
  • Elastic (to help keep the paws on if they are not snug enough)
  • Heavy String
  • Clippers (for shaving fur)
  • Paw pad materials
    • Such as fabric, leather scraps, rubber car mats, etc.

To start, you'll need a pair of canvas shoes. Canvas shoes work best, since the hot glue sticks well with minimal problems. I'd suggest avoiding using leather or leather-like shoes, since sometimes its harder for the hot glue to stick. You can find canvas shoes in the shoe departments of discount department stores, like WalMart for as cheap as $4 a pair in sizes up to size 12. Mark the shoes on the inside with a permanent marker "L" and "R" for left and right, respectively. This will help you once your shoes get covered in fur and foam, its often hard to tell left shoe from right shoe.

Take out the shoelaces (if any) and hot glue the tongue of the shoe to the part where you lace it up. You can see in the pictures that I've glued the tongue to the rest of the shoe to make it similar to a slip on. Begin by gluing pieces of upholstery foam to the toe-end of the shoe using hot glue. Depending on the type of foam you have acquired, you can either carve your toes as a solid piece, make individual toes or just wrap a foam piece around the toe-end and define the toes later (by means of strings separating the individual toes, similar to a stuffed animal's paw).            The picture to the left shows the start of two toes that have not been trimmed yet, as well as using foam to raise the back of the heel so the shoe has a higher profile to match up with the leg of a costume. The foam had been glued in sections to the shoe and to itself to get the toe-shapes. The picture to the right shows the foam wrapped around the toe-end of the shoe to make one large "toe" that was later separated into individual toes by strings.

When carving and trimming foam it is best to use a sharp pair of scissors and a razor blade. The razor blade is used to cut large hunks, slice the foam for individual toes, or get it more to a general shape that you can further refine using the scissors to snip away. Its a little bit messy, so be prepared with a good vacuum or do it in a place that's easy to sweep up.           This picture depicts a solid piece of foam carved to accommodate the shoe, and it has each of the individual toes carved as part of one piece. The whole piece got glued to the front end of the shoe for the toes.

Once you have your foam glued to your shoes, you are ready to begin furring. I suggest taking a look at my Furring tutorial, which covers how to make a pattern using tape and offers some additional tips on how to apply the fur to your form. Here are some pictures of footpaws before they are covered in fur. Finished paws before furring, these ones are marked L and R on the inside. The foam for these footpaws was applied in strips and then trimmed down to make the toe-shape.  Once fur is applied the small gaps in the foam will not be noticeable. These toes have plastic toenails  glued in each toe, and the picture on the bottom shows that I lined the inside with plain black fabric  and added elastic pieces to help hold my feet in place (since there are no laces)

When gluing the fur, (or making your pattern for gluing) do it so the fur lays towards the toes, at least on the top and front of the toes, on the rest it can point downwards. When gluing, if you come to a point where the fur has an obvious fold, you can cut along the fold until one part lays flat, and then trim the other side to match up. Apply the glue in a zigzagged motion under the two pieces and pinch them together until it dries. You can go back and touch up your seam later with a line of hot glue, to diminish the seam appearance.           Once fur is fully applied, you can add more definition to the toes by either using heavy string sewn through the shoes to define the toes, or by shaving down the fur between the toes, which I think works best. You can shave the fake fur with hair clippers, personal trimmers, or dog clippers (practice on a scrap piece of fur beforehand in case you aren't sure how it may look).           You can also hot glue fur to the sole of the shoe as well, though it may need replacing often due to wear, and can get dirty. If you have a cheaper quality fur available to you, you can use that for the bottom of paws so it is more inexpensive to replace when it gets worn. As for paw pads, you can use a variety of materials such as regular fabric, rubberized upholsterer fabrics, leather scraps, rubber car mats, also "Fun Foam" covered in a sealant, like Shoe Goo.            Cut your paw pad material to shape and hot glue it to the sole of the shoe. A sealant like Shoe Goo is recommended, depending on the material. If its a thin fabric or fun foam carefully spread the Shoe Goo over the entire surface of the paw pad, and a little over the sole of the shoe. Make sure its all sealed, and there are no air bubbles. Typically the Shoe Goo looks lumpy as its going on, but evens out and dries rather smooth (and clear!). If you use a dark color you don't have to worry much about dirty paws, but if you use pink or a light color just a quick wipe with a damp cloth gets most of the dirt off the bottom of the pawpads. If using leather or rubber car mats, you can use Shoe Goo as an adhesive in addition to hot glue, these materials are tougher and can hold up on their own, but the Shoe Goo can help hold the pawpad material on the shoe. Give Shoe Goo a whole day to dry, as its drying you can add any finishing touches to your paws such as clawnails made of oven-bake Sculpy clay, and once they're all dry ...enjoy!

A finished paw, this one has grey plastic claws from Grey Owl Crafts.

Black paws made with long fur, and shorter fur covering the soles. 
The paw pads were made from "fun foam" sealed with Shoe Goo.

These grey paws have had over a year of wear  and they are still in one piece! 
I did later replace the paw pads with leather ones, though, instead of the "fun 
foam" and shoe goo combination you see pictured above.

These black paws had the soles entirely covered in fur, including stuffed paw 
pads, if you do that, though, I don't recommend wearing them outdoors. The 
fur is still susceptible to wear so eventually would need replaced.

Although this pair of paws pictured is a pair of "soft bottomed" paws (slippers) 
I redid the bottoms using rubberized upholsterer's fabric. I sewn the grey pawpad 
shapes on with my sewing machine using a zigzag stitch, and then hand-sewn the 
black fabric piece around the edge. Its possible to also do this for your shoe-based 
pawpads just leave enough fake fur around the edge to sew to, and you can 
hand-sew your fabric paw bottoms on with a needle and thread. 

I hope you found this tutorial to be helpful and informative!