tir38

I painted another pair of shoes, this time for my friend, Jaime Walker. I call them “walkers”. Rather lame, I know. I started with Vans KVD’s, courtesy of Rená at Abbadabba’s. I used the same brand paint as previous shoes and added purple tulips with green stems. I then outlined the flowers with a fine-tip permanent marker. I began by using a “very fine” tip, however the paint dried out the marker tip. I then switched to a fatter “fine” tip marker and with enough finesse, I was still able to draw very thin lines.

I decided not to dye them because I have had problems with other shoe-dying projects lately. When dying bright colors such as red and navy blue, both the canvas and the rubber changed color. Also, as I learned the hard way, it is impossible to bleach black canvas Vans white. I tried to make white shoes with black soles by starting with the black/black Vans slip ons. The fabric disintegrates very quickly and begins to rip after coming into direct contact with bleach.

Anyways, I learned a lot during this project about delicacy and patience. Its not easy to fix a mistake on white canvas. Slight smudges of purple are obvious in one of pictures below.

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This year, like last, I decided to hold the Santa’s Little Messenger Bicycle Race benefiting Atlanta’s Toys For Tots program. The concept behind the race is that individuals and businesses around town, who were going to donate a toy to Toys For Tots, register the toy with me via a web form instead of finding a local drop off point. Then, on the day of the race, riders picked up the toys and returned them to the “base”. Two categories of racers (solo and two-person teams) competed to earn the most “toy miles”.

The race began almost immediately with a terrible rain storm but all the riders really toughed it out and did a great job. This year, seventeen racers (six teams and five solo racers) collected 96 toys. The complete results are available on Faster Mustache.org.

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