Cinderella shoes

The Cinderella story is something with meaning for all of us.  An unknown girl, poor and beset by problems, encounters a prince and is rescued.  It is something we can all dream about, whoever we are, and whatever the prince.

One thing I’ve always wondered is why Cinderella wears a slipper of glass.  I can imagine the glass breaking as she runs, with terrible consequences.  Maybe that is too engineering-oriented, but the image is hard to shake.  In fact, glass is extremely strong if there are no defects.  Of course, this misses the whole point, fairy glass is unbreakable, and beautiful, and it drives the entire story.

Another unfairness is the issue with gender.  Why can’t a boy be rescued by a princess?  If we imagine it, what would he wear.  In this case, I put myself into the story, and imagine what glass slippers I would wear.  I cast these slippers from a pair of my own shoes.  Just image how I would look at the ball!

I used Bullseye crystal clear casting glass for these shoes.

Some months earlier, I had done my first experiment with shoes.  That experience was part disaster, and part learning.  I followed the same process as with the shoe above, but I failed to completely remove the wax before casting.  The result was wax embedded in the glass, discoloration, and lots of bubbles.  I was using an oven to try to melt it out, but I’ve since decided that that doesn’t really work.  Since then, I connect a rubber hose to a pressure cooker to make a steam jet, to use heat and water to melt out the wax.  The results have been good.