chunky two tone sandals

I've made my second pair of shoes! suede and vinyl, medium heeled, clog-like sandals.
I really like them stylistically. In fact dare I say, I even love them a little bit! My general criteria with my self-made stuff is: would I buy this if I saw it in a shop? and in this case: hmmm,well y'know I think I would be attracted enough to pick them up, at least! Actually buying? well apart from the definite whiff of eau de homemade about them... ;) My cobbling skills are low to non-existent but so far that doesn't really bother me all that much. I'm learning by doing.
I actually do love them, they feel solid, modern and somehow honest. I am really going to enjoy wearing them :)
The how...

They have a wooden base, made of pine from Bunnings. I cut and glued two layers together using interior/exterior PVA glue, then cut the basic shape of the shoes rather roughly using a bandsaw.

Further shaping, fine-tuning and sanding was done on a belt sander using 40, 80 and 120 grit sandpaper. Once I was happy with the shape and had sanded it all nice and perfectly smooth, I applied three coats of varnish; exterior grade, satin finish.

By the way, I've gone back and added some extra "progress" pictures to my previous shoe-making post just in case that sort of thing is interesting... sewstylist commented that progress pictures would not be boring, and thank you for saying that! so I've put in a few more pictures this time too :)

The upper is made of caramel-brown suede (from Skindhuset, in Copenhagen) and pale grey vinyl (Spotlight). The suede is eked out from the leftover scraps from my caramel suede jacket. I cut backing pieces from old bed sheeting, which is a thick and very strong fabric, and glued the uppers and backing pieces together before topstitching all around the perimeter in matching threads. These uppers were nailed to the wooden bases using 15 x 1.6mm blued tacks (Bunnings). I chose these partly because I liked the rustic look of them, also because they were the only nail option in this size, but now the non-uniform appearance of the heads bothers me a bit. I hammered matching copper-look snaps (Spotlight) to the straps that close around the back of my heel.

For the soles, I cut adhesive cork liner sheets (Spotlight) to size, glued them on and applied five coats of satin varnish to strengthen and harden the surface.

Things I would do different again: In the future, I would save time and brush-cleaning by applying the cork sole before doing any wood varnishing; and then just apply three coats of varnish to the wooden base and cork sole together.
Bed-sheeting, even though it has very desirable qualities of being very strong and inflexible, is probably not the most wonderful choice for backing the uppers. It's good but is a bit thin and "fabricky", if that makes any sense. I was worried that vinyl would be too thick for the job, but in retrospect I think it might work well.

Obviously, I have already started planning the next pair... :)