Hi all,

As you are all aware, I am currently in the throes of my 4th Dr cosplay thread.
I often build props to make the pictures (hopefully) a bit more interesting.

Usually these are just cheap 'n' cheerful cardboard jobs, but every now & again I get inspired to spend a bit more time & effort on a certain prop & these builds will get their own build diaries.

The first of these is Tom Bakers boots.
Tom first wears boots in "The Deadly Assassin", when he is given a very flash set of clothes to wear. These are a very rich reddy brown patent leather with large cuffs.
Oddly, in his next adventure, "The Face of Evil", he is wearing a completely different pair of boots which are suede with distinctly lighter cuffs.
You can see these again in such adventures as "The Invasion of Time", but then in later adventures such as "The Armageddon Factor" & "Shada" he goes back to wearing his brown leather ones.

It is quite difficult finding good reference pictures, this is the best one I could find, from the "Armageddon Factor"....



The only other picture I could find was from Steve Rick's blog, so I hope he doesn't mind me using it:



These are not originals, but a pair Steve has specially commissioned for his own amazing cosplay.
Now, I should imagine that a custom made pair of leather boots would cost a pretty penny.

A quick internet search showed me that even standard boots were in a price bracket a bit above what I was prepared to pay, so I decided to see if I could come up with something half decent just using all the gubbins I had lying around.

A quick look in my TARDIS shed revealed an old pair of welly boots. (Of course, they were in the boot cupboard!)
I stuffed them with card so they would stay upright, then wrapped card around the top of them to make the shape of the cuffs:


 

Next I took one of my old training mats which had seen better days. It's made of some kind of vinyl, plastic material, but is textured, so looks quite like leather. I chopped it up to get some strips of the material:



Then I wrapped it around the card leaving a slight overhang at the bottom then tucked & glued the top into place:



Next I had a good rummage through my large box of old paints & found a tube of "burnt umber" acrylic. This one tube was more than enough to give the boots a nice thick coat:

 

Next, I painted the soles a darker brown colour. Also, I was worried that the acrylic paint would scuff or crack, so I gave them a good thick coat of varnish. I already had the varnish hanging around, but if you need some & are on a budget, one small tin from the PoundShop is enough to do the job:

 

And there you have it! A pair of nice shiny, brown boots for precisely no money whatsoever!
No one's going to mistake them for real leather, but for a cosplay costume, they do just fine.

Here's what they look like on:

 

Hope you approve!

Of course, full pictures of me wearing my boots will be appearing in my Cosplay thread very soon.

As always, any questions or comments will be gratefully received


Best regards to you all,


Russell

Interesting!  Because I'm making the classic comic book style Captain America boots so obviously I'm using...red Wellies for the base, with the plan of adding a red vinyl cuff.

Nice improvising, Russell! I can't remember where I read it - it might have been in Bob Mitsch's Four Breakdown before most of the images vanished due to his server crash - but those boots shown in your image were only used in the story that image is from, "The Armageddon Factor", the final 6-part story of 'The Key To Time' series. Tom's other, similar boots weren't so shiny; they were more suede-ish (not to be confused with Swedish).

They're called "Buccaneer Boots" (also "Pirate" Boots). A Google search using Buccaneer shows some inexpensive ones available (in different styles, naturally; none exactly match the boots Tom wore, not even these, but they come close enough). A couple of options are available from Medieval Collectibles ranging from $55 to $76 US. Amazon also has some options between $44 and $65 US. (The ones in that Amazon link are black, but there are more options further down that page.) There are dozens more to look through on that Google search.

Yours are certainly built to stand up to the ravages of a Time Lord's daily life, but if they need a back-up pair, there are inexpensive ones out there. (You might also find some of those helpful, Other Steve, though I'm not sure how many of them come in "Captain America Red".)

I hope some of this helps.

Dino.

The wellies look great!

Another inexpensive option is vinyl boot tops - *if* you can find a pair without laces they're usually under a tenner.

I bought a black pair for an Elizabethan Blackadder costume for about £6, it was almost impossible to tell they weren't boots without close inspection.

Hey guys,


Thanks for your comments.


Dino: you are right, you can get leather boots off the internet for about £30 to £40,

Phill: Yes, I looked at those slip on vinyl covers, which make your shoes look like boots for about £5 to £10.


These are both great options, but I think half the fun & pride is in building something from scratch yourself


Best regards,


Russell