Kustom Kollection Gallery


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Very First Try (outside)
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Very First Try (inside)
These are the very first pair of customs I did.  I'm a teacher in real life and I thought the students would get a 'kick' out of a pair of teacher shoes.  Well, they turned out so badly I never had the nerve to wear them.  But they did show me that there was real potential in making custom shoes.  The first trick I learned was that black is the hardest colour to use as a base.  I used painty pens so I figured they would cover the black fairly easily.  I was wrong.  It took many layers to bring the colours up, much to my frustration.

But rest assured, things started to get better pretty quickly.  Keep looking.  See for yourself.

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Second Try (getting better)
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Second Try (getting better)
Next came a pair of Batman and Robin shoes, also on the cheapies.  I never did finish these.  There were going to be villains on the other side, but I wasn't big on the artwork. 

The important thing here is that I moved from black canvas to lighter (though this is a sort of cammo pattern and again, hard to colour over).  Also, I used fabric pens for the first time.  They were much better than painty pens in that the colour was rich and they blended nicely.  The downside is that they tend to be fairly expensive and they don't last very long.

After these I made a pair of Star Trek shoes for my brother but I didn't get a picture of them.  One of these days I'll go over to his place and snap a pic or two.  If I ever remember. 

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Star Wars (outside)
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Star Wars (inside)
Now things are starting to shape up a little.  These are my Star Wars shoes.  I bought these cool brown Chucks at some discount shoe store for $35 (half the regular price here in Canada) and agaonized for weeks - what to do, do I dare try to paint over a dark colou again, etc.  Finally I just went for it and this is the final result. 

The image side is, of course, Yoda (Jedi Master extraordinaire and bad-ass sabre swordsman) and Boba Fett (the most feared Bounty Hunter in the galaxy).  I did them completely in fabric markers and I am very happy with the results.  The inside is just random design done in fabric marker and painty pen.  Not too bad, I guess.  I just didn't know what else to put on the inside that incorporated the patches.  In retrospect, I should have made the patches into Death Stars or something.  Oh well.  Next time. 

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Cool Fish
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Cool Frog
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Cool Fish/Frog Tongues
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These are my first try with white Converse and I have to say, they are one of my favourite pair.  They're just a lot of fun, very colourful.  I wore them to my teacher's college graduation and got a lot of compliments on them.

I used fabric markers only, which are very vibrant and remain so.  But again, cost and durability are an issue.



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Bat Villain Shoes
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Bat Villains (inside)
My second favourite pair so far.  You may see a common thread running through these shoes.  I'm also a HUGE Batman fan.  These, obviously, depict Joker and Riddler. 

I did these completely in fabric pens.  Again - colours look great.  Bank account severely deflated.  Now, when I say expensive, a set of five markers runs about $11.  And of course, those five don't offer all the necessary colours, so it means buying a second set of alternate colours - another $11.  And if you're lucky you get one full pair of shoes (all four sides and the tongue) out of them.  But hey.  When the end result is these bad boys, it's worth it.

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Batman (in Sharpies)
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Here's another pair of Batman Chucks done in Sharpies as opposed to fabric markers.  These were meant to sort of be complimentary to the Villain shoes but they didn't really turn out the way I had hoped.  I like the design, but the colours (or lack thereof) just don't pop.  Not sure if it's the grim colour scheme or the Sharpies themselves.  They're OK, but not the best I've done.

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These are the first pair of 'commissioned' shoes I ever did.  They were for a twelve year old girl who loved, as you may guess, cotton candy.  These were experimental.  I used regular acrylic paint for these, which worked surpringly well, actually.  I then soaked the shoes till they were saturated, mixed up a watery batch of pink, blue, purple, and yellow paint and just blotched it on.  The watery shoes pulled the paint wherever it wanted to go and gave it a pretty decent tye-dye look.  After they dried completely (a couple of days to be sure they were good and dry) I painted on the lettering with the same paint (though not thinned out anywhere near as much).  I also gave them a little blast of clear acrylic top coat for added measure.

In the end they looked pretty cool and the kid was quite happy with them.  I've yet to try acrylic again and I don't know how waterproof they ended up.  But I figured even if they bled a little . . . it's tye-dye.  Who's gonna notice?



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General Lees
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John 'Bo Duke' Schneider signing the shoe
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John Schneider, me and the General Lee autographed shoe
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Autogrpahed General on display
These are one of my faves simply for the cool story that goes along with them.  The design themselves are relatively simple.  It was all done in painty pen over a year ago.  I've worn them a few times, but then, a couple of months back, I saw that John Schneider was going to be at a car show in Toronto.  So off I dragged my wife to meet Bo Duke himself (it was our anniversary - not sure if she's forgiven me yet, though we also saw Dirty Dancing that night so I figure I paid my dues).  He loved the shoes and I was so thrilled to meet one of my childhood heroes that I walked away without my autogrpahed pictures.  I went back and we chatted for a while.  It was very cool.

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Speaking of cool: My buddy Ben, Me, Henry Winkler and my buddy Ryan
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Hank Zipzer
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My fan letter to Henry Winkler
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Fonzie shoe signed by Henry Winkler
This is another great story.  Last summer (Aug. 08), Henry 'The Fonz' Winkler (another of my childhood heroes) was making an appearance at the Fan Expo in Toronto.  He's also an author with a series of books featuring Hank Zipzer - a struggling kid who suffers from Dyslexia (as does Mr. Winkler).  So I decided to make a pair of Henry Winkler shoes for him to sign.

We got in line and when we met, he was very cool.  Seriously - The Fonz is as cool in real life as he was on TV.  Anyway, I got him to sign the Fonzie shoe and I gave him the Hank Zipzer shoe.  He seemed to be genuinely touched.  So there's only one pair of Fonzie/Zipzer shoes on the entire planet.  I have one of them and Henry Winkler has the other. 

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Ledger Joker (right)
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Ledger Joker (left)
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Ledger Joker (left and inside right)
These are my faves so far and also my most recent.  I used a different kind of fabric paint here, though I can't recall what it's called.  It's very vibrant and durable and brushes on with a screenprint-like finish.

I also used a seam splitter to tear sections out of the top layer of fabric and inserted some Jokeresque fabric in behind.  I stitched it in place with white thread, added some red laces and viola - cool Joker shoes based on Heath Ledger's The Dark Knight protrayal.

I haven't had much opportunity to wear these yet, but I look forward to it.  Right now they're too bright.  They'll look awesome when they get dirty and worn.

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Hulk shoe preliminary sketch
Above is a preliminary sketch for the Hulk shoe I'll make for Fan Expo this year and get Lou Ferigno to sign (hopefully).  The shoe will be purple, I think, though I may use the more obvious green.  I'll use the ripped fabric technique again with the Hulk face behind the main shoe fabric.  I'll also rip segments away (like the Joker shoe) and put fabric in behind (green if I don't use the green shoe).  A pair of green laces and some wear-n-tear and there ya have it.  An autogrpah-worthy Hulk shoe.  Stay tuned.