Faun Hooves

Honestly, this guy was my favorite character next to Edmund and Alsan. Mr. Tumnus was so kind towards Lucy after his *ahem* mistake. I mean, is that not the cutest pic!!
Anyway, I found the idea for faun hooves and thought, "Hey! That would be a really fun idea! I need a good project to work on." And then never started.
Well, I've sat on that project idea for 3 months now and have finally decided to do it! They went together easier than I ever thought they would so I decided to share and maybe you can make your own! I love projects that actually work don't you?
Step 1 The Things You Need.
The things I needed to buy where,

• a pair of high heels
• 3 pairs of trouser socks
• pool noodle
• Yarn

The rest was stuff I had like,

• Low temperature hot-glue gun.
• Jig-saw
• scrap wood
• power drill
• screws
• thick fabric
• a whole lot of improvising.

Now let's get started. The first thing is you need to analyze your high heels. Here are the ones I used.
 
 The must-have criteria on these things are the covered toe, ankle strap, and heel cover. Those are a must and you will see why later.

Step 2 Get rid of that heel
 The heel on these puppies need to go! So take that jig-saw and get going! Here's how much I hacked mine.


 Step 3 Padding
 You don't want that curve on the bottom of the shoe. So I cut some strips of fabric and padded it up. 
 You can see that the curve is gone. On to the next step!

Step 4 Give it a lift
As you can see, a faun's heel is much higher than any high heel will be. His heel is quiet up there. Now, that's CG but you can get pretty close by cutting out some wooden lifts.


 I traced the flat toe of the high heel on a plank of wood, then cut them out. They're pretty thick as you can see here.                                                               

 Step 5 Attachment
This step can be pretty hard. You have to drill through the shoe and into the wood below, making sure that they are lined up. In hindsight I would probably have cut away a bit of the top. As it is I shredded the screws, which ended up sticking into my feet. I padded those up later and am none the worse for it. But I want to save you the trouble of all that.














Step 6 First layer of trouser socks
I had the hardest time finding a pair of cheap trouser socks. Finally did at Target! YAY! But they came in three different colors. Nude, Brown and Black. Do Nude first. Make sure you cut the toe open so you can hot glue the sock in the slit where the shoe meets the wood.

(Trying to take a picture of my own leg. Not an easy task.)

Step 7 More padding!
You need to give your foot a fauny appearance. So get ride of that dainty toe with layers of more felt.

On this project you really need to feel out what works for you. But you should defidently pad the toe and ankles.
I also padded the heel to make it come to a sharper point. (You can't see it because I didn't figure it out till later and didn't bother taking another pic.)

Step 8 Getting messy with the pool noodle.
This part was a bit of a challenge and took a lot of patience. You need to cut and glue little bits of noodle to create the cloven faun hoof. You need to make it really smooth because it will stand out after the paint job.

The great thing about pool noodle is that it melts with the hot glue, fusing is together.

Step 9 More trouser socks
 Next layer is black. That way the last layer, brown, shows distinctly. Be generous with the hot glue. You don't want these socks detaching while you're wearing them.



Step 10   Painting and more!
Now comes the fun part! You take the hot glue gun and swipe it over the surface. This creates a rough surface and smalls grooves. I broke up the solid brown by adding a tanish color. Make sure you avoid those small silky threads that trail on the end. It looks odd if you have them. I also painted a little black on the inside of the clove to hide the place where the pool noodle meets the wooden block.

 Pointer!! If you are wanting to wear these outside you need to use waterproof paint. I did not and the paint began washing off when I wore them outside.

Step 11 Final sock layer and hair
Add the final layer of socks and glue on. Now comes another tedious part. You are going to add hair to the edge, where the sock meets the hoof. That will hide the seam.
I used this kind of yarn.                                             
You take the end and shred it with a brush.

 This part takes a long time because you don't want the entire hoof to be covered by hair, but you want it to cover some. So you are snipping little pieces and gluing them to the seam all around the hoof. I went longer in the back so it covered almost all of it.

Voila! You now have an amazing pair of faun hooves!


 I debated whether or not to glue hair up the bottom to the heel and up the back of the leg. I decided not too because I want to buy some furry fabric and make pants.

If you ever try this or have tried it please comment! I would love to hear how you did it or how it goes!!