Almost exactly a month ago, one of my followers, Nancee, left a comment here in response to my blog post about making the Curvy Barbie High-low dress you see pictured above.
Nancee asked, “Where did you get the adorable strappy, yellow shoes in today’s picture? I bought a Yoga Barbie and she did not come with any footwear – not even socks. The shoes I see for sale are way too dramatic for my taste and do not go with outfits I am inclined to make. Help…please. Thanks.”
So today’s blog post answers the question, “Where can you buy cute doll shoes?” And especially, I’d like to answer the question, “Where can you get realistic-looking doll shoes?” Because let’s face it, there are NO human beings on this planet who go to work wearing these awful things:
Zoom in on that image. Can you see the pattern on those plastic shoes? It’s all scaly like a toad! Who, at Mattel, decided that Barbie would look fantastic in these? Because no. Just… NO.
So here’s the answer I gave to Nancee about buying doll shoes that a person might actually wear, in real life:
The strappy yellow shoes worn by my Curvy Barbie actually came on a Pink Pizzazz #30 Tall Barbie, but you can buy just about any type of Barbie shoes on eBay. Here’s a link to an eBay search for Barbie sandals.
The cool thing about buying Barbie shoes on eBay is the low price. For five bucks or so, you can buy just about any combination of shoes for Barbie dolls: Boots, flats, sandals, or a mix of many varieties of shoes for Barbies.
You can even buy shoes for the little 5-inch Chelsea dolls — or any other specific fashion doll. Here’s a tiny box of my own 5-inch doll shoes, for example, and people sell sets like this for next to nothing:
But as always, pay attention to shipping costs. People will sometimes jack up the shipping price beyond what it takes to actually ship them.
I should also mention that my friend, Dodi, has an eBay shop that specializes in really cool, NORMAL-looking shoes for Barbies that have a flat foot. Flat-footed Barbies’ shoes are super hard to find, but Dodi has a niche there, as she owns lots of sets of still-in-the-package “little extras” with these really cool, realistic shoes in them.
Here are some flat-footed Barbie shoes that I bought from Dodi, so you can see that these shoes are truly realistic:
Flats, slip-ons, and Mary Janes — it doesn’t get more realistic than that. I mean, these are shoes that Barbie can wear to work, whether she’s a barista, a teacher, the CEO of a major corporation, a waitress, a scientist, or even a nurse. Would people working in any of those realistic jobs be caught dead in the toad shoes? I think not!
Please note that these “flat-footed Barbie” shoes don’t fit the beach Barbies from the early 2000’s. They don’t fit modern Fashionistas with flat feet either. They DO fit the rarer flat-footed Barbies from the 1990’s. sometimes referred to as “posable Barbie dolls.” Here’s what their feet look like:
I did find, in my “Shoe Swap” unboxing video (after buying shoes from Dodi), that the Spin Master Liv dolls can actually wear the flat-footed Barbie shoes from the 1990’s (made for the doll with feet shown above). So that was pretty exciting because I have quite a few Liv dolls too.
In fact the Chelly Wood doll is a Liv doll. See my little white Mary Janes in the unboxing image below? Those are a pair of the flat-footed Barbie shoes that I bought from Dodi.
Dodi’s shop is called Barbie1959Pink, and she’s an honest seller with very fair prices for her hard-to-find Barbie shoes!
Another doll that has a lot of wonderful normal-looking shoes is Mattel’s Creatable World, but I’ve said enough in this blog post. We’ll have to save the topic of Creatable World shoes for another day.
If you enjoy the doll clothes sewing tutorials that are free on my YouTube channel, you should have a look at my paid courses on the Creative Spark online learning platform. Here’s what people are saying about my course called “How to Alter Doll Clothes Patterns” so far:
Student 1: “I love this course! I am learning so much. You do a wonderful job. Thank you so much.”
Student 2: “This is more in-depth than I thought.”
As always, feel free to pin, like, or tweet about my blog posts. Here’s a photo of my Wellie Wisher wearing a pair of felt Edwardian boots I designed, which you can easily access on my website at this link:
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