Customs Guide Pt 1
So here is a lil something for people who want to learn how to make customs.
A) What you need
1) You are gonna need to get 100% Acetone, Cotton Balls, and Qtips.
You can purchase Acetone in any Hardware store, cotton balls and Qtips can be bought at any pharmacy or supermarket.
2) You are gonna have to purchase Angelus Leather Acrylic Paint.
Search Google for suppliers in your area.
The paint comes in 1oz and 4oz bottles. Pictured below
3) You can also intermix the paints to create new colors.
I use film canisters to hold my mixed paint.
4) These are the brushes you will need to paint a pair of kicks.
a) flat chisel tip size 3/8 for filling large areas
b) Flat tip size 1/8 also for filling large areas
c) A rounded size 6 tip for filling in smaller areas.
d) A medium fine tip liner size 5 for stitching and swoosh
e) A fine tip size 2 fot edges
f) A extra fine tip size 10/0 for small detailes.
g) medium chisel tip size 1/4 for Large areas.
B) The prepping process IMPORTENT
THIS HAS TO BE DONE AND YOU HAVE TO DO THIS RIGHT.
Your sneaker will not stand up to wear if you do not do this correct.
You will dip the cotton ball in Acetone, push out all the extra acetone out of the cotton ball and start rubbing the areas of the sneaker you would like to paint. This is done to remove the clear protective coating so you can paint the sneaker. The clear coating will come off and stick to the cotton ball leaving a white resedue, or black if you are working with black leather respectively other colors do the same. If this is not done the paint will chip and crack off after 1 wear once again. There are 2 two ways you can tell if the shoe is ready for painting.
1) The leather that is prepped will feel a bit like suede, also it will not be as slippery as the unprepped leather. Just run the bottom of your finger on the prepped and unprepped leather and you will be able to see what im talking about.
2) The second way you can tell is really easy, after prepping your sneaker for a while you will see the leather turn gray and reveal a suede like material. That is when you know that the sneaker is ready for painting.
It is better to over prep your first custom sneaker a little then underprep it and have to repaint the cracked areas in the future.
Excessive overprepping will damage the original texture of the leather so be carefull not to overprep your kicks extreamly.
You will develop a feel to what i am talking about only after you do it yourselfa few times.
This is pictured below.
Stay tuned for PART 2 the painting process.