Naruto shoes DIY

Wow, it's been a long time since I have posted anything to this blog!! Blame my PHD getting in life's way ;-)

In the last year, I have studied for and written my comprehensive exam. Submitted my proposal. Organized a international conference. Travel to Vancouver and Florida to present papers and off course taken care of my two amazing kids who are now 1 and a half and 3 and a half!

Right now, I am working on my thesis! Yeah! It's the last stretch... so what do I do... decide to get back into cosplaying!

Well I can totally blame my thesis director for that... As I study asian influence in francophone picturebooks, on my reading list for my exam were quite a few "manga study" books I had to read. One of which was a Naruto case study. Add that to my own daughter finding the manga at home and being all excited to have found a "new coloring book"... and there we are... getting the kids ready for their first cosplay experience! Fan Expo 2015 here we come... Naruto style.

So that brings me to the footwear issue... How do I get my not quite 2 years old son and my not quite 4 years old daughter to have awesome looking Naruto shoes (in their size) that are comfortable enough for them to spend the entire day walking in them! (Yes cosplaying with Toddlers is a whole different ball game! But more on that in a different post!)

Dollorama to the rescue!

Here is a tutorial on how to make Naruto shoes from 2$ dollorama crocs.

Note that these ones are black-ish as they will be for my daughter who wants to cosplay as Gaara. On some pictures, you will see a blue-ish variation that are for my husband (Kakashi). 

I kept the whole thing very simple and affordable as

1.  I have 5 pairs to make and really I should be working on my thesis... not on making Naruto shoes.

2. Two off the pairs are tiny and do not leave much room for details.

3. Everything should be simple in life.
4. Shoes  2$, for the rest I used scrap fabric and some craft foam (also from Dollorama)

Also, the shoes are not meant to be replica of the anime version (they could if you wanted them to be). We decided to make our cosplay more like the Naruto Live Action. Therefore we did some variation and intend on making them look like they have seen some real action :-)

1. Cut the shoes

2. I added a leather insole for comfort. You could skip that step if you wanted too.

For the top of the boot
1. Cut a long rectangle on the fold. Make sure it is long enough to go around your ankle, with enough space to slip your foot in. Make sure it is high enough for the height of the boot (add about and 1 inch to the desired height.The fold should be at the top of the boot.


2. Open up your rectangle, and sew the "height" together into a tube. Once you are done, flip it over and fold it back in half.

3. Inside the fold, slip in the foam noodle (for the kids shoes, I cut the noodle length wise, to remove half the bulk. For the adult shoes, I left it as is. Make sure it is completely in. I used pins to keep it in place. Make sure the bottom hem is even. This is also a good time to try it on. Your foot should be able to slip in easily.

4. Sew tightly against the noodle. Push the noodle in and gently pull on your fabric as you sew. To make sure the noodle is all the way to the top nice and even.

5. Once it is done, you will see how nice and structure the top of the boot is.

6. Now slip in the foam between the two layers of fabric.

 7. Quickly baste around the bottom hem to keep the foam in place. By now you should have a nice structured upper boot.

On the fabric, mark the shoe length from the toe cut to the heel.
Add about an inch to the length and expend the toe area upward.
Cut two piece for each shoe (so 4 in total)
Sew the heel together, and the top (if you don't want a seam over the toe area, cut the fabric on the fold)

Turn over, attach the shoe cover to the upper boot part.
Align the back seam of the upper boot, with the heel seam.
Turn it over.
Finish the hem around the bottom.



























Here you have two choices

1. finish the hem over the toes, OR 2. add another piece that will fold back into the inside of the shoe. It is not anymore work and makes for a nicer finishing.


Last, I added elastic underneath for greater stability.

Once the shoes are done, go a head and add any details you might want to add. I am still in the process of distressing them, once done, I will add a picture. But this is a basic Naruto shoe that is extremely comfortable.

DIY wall art : World Map

We are finally coming around fixing the kids' bedroom! Yes, they both still have a mattress on the ground in our master's bedroom (not that they even use it, as they are full time resident of our bed). Before Hudson's was born, we made a playroom for the kids. At one point we thought it would be a great bedroom is we only added a mattress on the ground, but as we dealt with some serious sleep issue, it became a no-go (although there is now a mattress in that room, it is mostly being used as a trampoline and guest bed.)

We decided was the kids really needed was a low sensory bedroom. No toys, no distraction, minimal colors... So we decided to turn our guest bedroom into a sleep heaven. When the bedroom will be done, I will post more about it ;-)

As the room started taking shape, we decided to put just one visual focus. Something meaningful, that would grow up with the kids and something unique. We decided to make a collage on the double closet sliding doors.  Since we travel a lot and have family and friends all over the world, we decided on a world map in which we would highlight Canada and China. For the collage itself, we thought about a few different material (newspaper of the date the kids were born, book pages from our favorite stories....) but decided to use some of the ridiculous amount of origami paper I bring back every time I go to Japan!



Here is a break down of the material we used
-mod pudge (about 4 oz)
-enamel primmer white for the doors (left over from another project)
-8 oz paint for the back ground. We used Behrs Free Spirit color
-projector
-the image you want to trace on a computer



-pencil (we used a pen to trace and regretted it as the ink ran when we brushed the glue)
-paper (we used about 15 different papers in 5 different shade). We found the thinner the paper was, the easier it was.
-A paint brush for the glue. We found a short hair, flat head worked best as it allowed us to press the air bubbles out.








First I painted the doors, two coats of the primer and two coats background color.












Then I projected the image and traced the outline of the picture.

 I had to cheat the map a bit so that half would be on one door and the other half on the other door.










Then I started gluing, and gluing, and gluing some more... my sister came to help as it turned out to be a very tedious job.










We did a different color per continent with Canada and China in red.











The hardest part was when ever we had to border two different colors. (Like in Asia). What worked best was to do both colors at the same time, so that we could adjust the frontiers before the glue had set.












 We also added a Rosetta.


















It was a time consuming project but the results are stunning.  





 




In all, the total cost was about 20$

*** This was really exciting to do as the final results was even better than I expected. It was time consuming but easy enough and did not require much skills!***