Alpha prim shoe base help

Can anyone please give me an idiot's guide to making the base shoe for a transparent shoe base? I have made prim shoes and boots with a coloured base shoe before now...and having got PSP8, I thought I would have a go at a transparent one, so that I can make heels without having the appearance menu shoe base interefering with it. But even though I am making alphas perfectly well for skirts and tops etc, if I use transparent on the shoe part of the template, I still get a flesh coloured base when I make the base in SL.

I have tried everything I can think of...using an completely transparent texture, importing an alpha texture specifically over the shoe template, making a transparent prim. You name it, I have tried it...but obviously NOT the thing I actually need to do.

Can anyone enlighten me? Specifically, I need the platform and sole of the shoe to be transparent, so that the avatar's foot is off the ground, but there isn't horrible pink shoe-shaped foot there instead.

Thanks!
Cali

You need an invisi prim! It's a script that hides the avatar's heels. Send me an IM and I will pop one in your inventory.