How to Customise your Sneakers

Have you been seeing all the brilliant customised sneakers on Instagram?

Well actually its really easy and cheap to do your own designs and you don’t need to be very artistic or crafty to do it.

I started with the following

1. Two pairs of $5.00 sneakers from K Mart one white pair one black pair
2. A hot glue gun and extra glue sticks
3. Some brightly patterned fabric
4. A small hessian jewellery bag that was cut into thin strips for trimming
5. Sharp scissors
6. A felt tip pen to cover mistakes!

To make it easier I firstly decided to only cover the toe and the tongue of the shoes. Then decided to add some more, and maybe I’m not finished yet!

Start by cutting a shape close’ish to the shape of the shoe, then trace the line of the toe with hot glue and press the fabric on top, but be careful as the hot glue comes through and burns like mad! So have a wad of old fabric to use to press down the fabric onto the shoe

Then with the sharp scissors trim the fabric off around the toe.

Then trim the fabric more or less to the shape of the tongue, leaving enough to wrap under the edge.

Put lines of hot glue on the tongue of shoe and press down (using the wad of fabric to do this) I used my hands and got a horrible blister!

Then glue the fabric under the tongue and trim off inside.

If you have cut unevenly or left gaps when gluing then fill in with the black marker pen.

I decided to add some more detail to the black shoes by cutting out a stripe from the fabric and gluing it onto each side of the shoe

The white sneakers have a thin strip of hessian glued just below the shoe detail, but you could use any braid or cord there. Maybe I should add some blue cord above it too?

The main thing is not to be too crazy fussy about the process as the shoes look so unique and different that no one will stop to closely examine your workmanship

These fabulous bright one of a kind sneakers look super cool worn with everyday dresses instead of the usual neat little heel, or even with a “Little Black Dress” as a completely unexpected twist.