How to Customize Kicks: Step-by-Step Instructions and Inspiration from the Sneaker Experts

This stylish if challenging guide by the team at the Japanese Customize Kicks Magazine shows how to add a personal flair to sneakers. The authors walk through nine techniques for customizing footwear, including waterslide decals, various painting styles, and building bespoke uppers (the shoe above the sole). On the easier end of the spectrum, the authors describe how to recolor the brand logo on the back tab of sneakers with acrylic leather paint or airbrush on a new design with a stencil. Airbrushing without a stencil can give shoes a graffiti-inspired look, while painting white or black accents to mimic the “reflections” and “shadows” in manga art produces a cartoony effect. The bounty of detailed photographic instructions ensures the processes are easy to understand, but there’s no getting around the difficulty of executing the hardest projects, which include replacing the swooshes on Nikes and effectively making new shoes by taking apart old ones, tracing the components onto new material, and assembling the results, a process that requires a laundry list of specialized tools that many readers won’t have. Sneakerheads will find inspiration, though they may struggle to realize the visions laid out here. (Mar.)