Sneaker Black

How To Create Your Own Sneaker Skins

Buying sneakers or trainers can be quite a difficult thing, many people want their trainers to be unique and stand out from the crowd. But with so many companies' mass producing the same style kicks, it is hard to have your own signature pair of which you won't see anybody else wearing. How are you meant to show off your individual style if everybody is wearing the same sneakers as you! And to get special one off's could cost you a fortune.

There is a solution however and it is really simple and can be very cost effective as well as being totally unique. Design your own. It is really easy and simple; a lot of good sneaker art companies have facilities which allow you to apply your own designs to your kicks. Simply by bringing in your design and uploading it to the system, they will print it onto correct sneaker skins and it is very cost effective.

The designs you want to do really all depends on you, think long and hard about it and take your time, you are going to have these on your sneakers so it has to be something you can imagine wearing on your feet. Try simple black line drawing, with patterns and general creativeness but not pushing yourself to far (unless of course you are a very talented artist). You may want colour but what you have to remember is you can always alter your designs via the software when uploading and add and change colours. Try and be adventurous and unique, these designs always make for the best sneakers.

The next thing once you have spent your time creating your unique design and are completely happy with it is scanning it, it really needs to be a good quality scan as this will be easy to edit on the system and it will make the overall outcome a higher quality print. A recommendation is scanning at 300dpi, you also need to check that you are working in CMYK colour mode (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key) so you are able to customise the skins with different colours. The file dimension will have to be 22 x 29 cm. Then use the live trace tool in Photoshop, if you cannot find it, it is located in the help section and it creates a clearer version of the original. It will make it more precise and professional looking but it is not necessary.

Once you have traced the shape in Photoshop you can then alter things such as colour or liquify to alter the shapes and mess around with the brightness, contrast, hue (colours again), saturation (how vibrant and rich the colours appear to be ranging from very rich to black and white) and others to really create a fresh new design that will be virtually impossible to copy. Then the company would simply print it out on sneaker skins when you where 100% happy about it, and it doesn't cost you the earth like most unique designed trainers and an added bonus is if you do get bored of them you can simply take them off without ruining your sneakers.

About the Author

Sneakart - Specialist in Custom Trainers and Personalised Trainers. Check out Sneaker Trainer Stickers.

Is it bad having all of your shoes black?

I am trying not to use black so much but yet have a habit of buying all my footwear black. I have black dress shoes, black skechers sneaker (with white stripes) , black polo ralph lauren sneakers(with white logo and a white line) black flip flops. I did try getting a pair of white polo ralph lauren but they did not have my size. So is it bad to have to many black like this? (I am a guy by the way)

No, black is fine. It is the smartest colour you can have when it comes to shoes and it goes with everything. You will have no problems in finding outfits to go with them, and you will look much more mature. It seems that you have a lot of different styles so you can make your outfit look casual or smart depending on the type of shoe, so it doesn't matter if they are all one colour.

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