Shoe Designing Fun!

For several months now I have been researching digital textile design tools online and kind of as side research found that Zazzle has a great custom shoe design section. This feature has been around since early 2008 and I was unaware of it. I had a Zazzle account for several years but had not been checking in on the latest features. Tonight I took two of my textile designs and applied them to two different women's shoes: Ked's and Converse. It took just a few hours (I could have done it much quicker but was noodling around with color schemes, stitching, etc.) Growing up in L.A. in the late 70's and early 80's when slip on Vans were very popular, I never imagined I'd be able to design my own slip on canvas shoes. Pretty incredible how technology creates such opportunities.









































Zazzle has a fantastic preview section. I got sucked in playing around with the numerous options. Great intuitive interface design at this site. Here is a screen capture below. You can look at your shoe from all angles and even view a pair of shoes of your design.




















Above: You can apply your custom textile to the exterior canvas surfaces of of the shoe.
Below: You can view your custom textile design on the flat pattern pieces. You can also download these pattern templates so that you can create seamless designs that wrap from one section of the shoe to another.











































The Snap2Objects blog has a great listing on different custom shoe sites.
I have created many sculptural shoes of Asian food wrappers, so it is fun for me to begin to create real shoes that people can wear.

Below are a few examples of my sculptural shoes. These are made of wrappers and wire and so cannot be worn (I've been asked many times and wish I could say "Yes, slip them on!")
Below: Poison Ivy Pump. This piece was exhibited at an Arts and Embassies Exhibit in Brussels last year.























Plantation Tabi sculptural shoes created of Morinaga Candy boxes and my grandfather's photos, seaweed candy wrappers and WWII bombing leaflets.






















1942 Shoe: this piece was in a Fuller Craft Museum exhibit last year.