craftgrrl | would really love some help!

Hi, I figured this might be the best place to ask people how to go about DIY-ing something like this. I've found that people on cosplay and costuming communities on LJ have been very helpful throughout the years so here I am again and I really hope that someone can help me out! I stumbled across these dSquared shoes the other night and they've been haunting me ever since then. Because they're WAY out of my budget, I was wondering whether any one of you could give me some pointers on how to go about building something like this atop an existing pair of stilettos.

As you can see in the third image, Mike Nguyen on Deviantart has been able to recreate these heels, but I didn't want to bother him with questions first. Mostly because I'm not sure which questions to ask or how to begin. If anybody can steer me in the right direction, that would be wonderful!