Burning Shoes

Well my 12yr old was using his wood burning kit for the first time on a school project when i was on instructables and saw this contest. Kismet- we all love the site but have never tried posting.So he's all excited ( but under age) I volunteer to do something, but what? what would be a bit different, interesting, and that can we burn hmmm...Older sister chimes in with "can you burn shoes"? Brilliant, but what to do design wise. Dr Who ( we are HUGE fans) Older sister to the recuse again. There's this web site that translates phrases into Gallifreyan ( home langauge of the Dr.) Ah but shoes Older Brother to the ready! He donated an old pair of leather shoes .So here we are with our Dr. Who inspired Burned Leather Shoes. A real family effort .

Materials:

1. A pair of LEATHER shoes. -- Please be careful if the shoes are made on synthetics the fumes could be toxic (like burning plastic)

2. A wood burning tool - from a kit or craft store.

3. carbon paper - for transferring your design

4. Tape

5. Ball point pen

6. acetone or nail polish remover - used this to clean the surface and remove some of the polish

7. Your design

Take a bit of nail polish remover and wipe down the area you are going to burn. We chose the toes of the shoes and the back of the heel. You don't want to remove all the color . Just any grime and a bit of the polish.

Once you have your design . Whether one you've created yourself or one ( as we did ) that you've printed out make sure it's sized to your shoe. Place the design on a piece of carbon paper. Tape it to the shoe tip. Trace firmly over the design with a ball point pen to transfer it to the leather.

Heat up your burning tool and start tracing over your design. It takes a moment fort he tool to burn through the surface so go slowly and use firm even pressure. We only had one tip on our tool so we had to go over areas to thicken lines and make solid circles.

My sons wood burning kit only came with one tip. After this project we are think of getting other that might hep us create different textures and widths of lines.

Our shoes say "Run you Clever Boy Run!" on the tip and "Geronimo" on the heel.