Dragon for Dragon

My cousin, Rosa wanted me to do a pair of sneakers for her son, Ryu.  Immediately, I thought about Street Fighter, but this was not the direction that would make any sense to this 7 month old later in life :) "Ryu" in Japanese means "dragon" so that was the appropriate theme for these customs.  Ryu turns 1 in October, so these are an early birthday present for the little guy.  

Rosa let me have free range on the kind of dragons and the colors.  She just asked that I have his name and birthdate on there.  On an infant shoe, there isn't a ton of room but I was able to utilize the space pretty well.  At least "Ryu" is only 3 letters! Haha!  As I was brainstorming and sketching ideas, I started drawing letters that looked like dragons.  I thought they came out playful and cute.  On the inside, I have another dragon in a "field" of fire with a little smoke ring puff coming out of its nose.  On the other sneaker, I have a happy flying dragon with some more flames and a few trees to set the scene.  Then inside has Ryu's birthdate "10/31/11" with a meaner dragon dividing the month-date-year with it's teeth.  To add more detail, I drew dragon teeth on one toe, and a curled dragon tail with "RYU" on the other toe.  Also, on the back heel strip, I repeated Ryu's name and his birthdate.

These little size 6 infant Stan Smith sneakers came out fun and playful.  Infant sizes are always a fun challenge.  Ryu isn't walking yet, but has started crawling.  It'll be a while until he can fit in these, but soon enough he'll be running around in them :)  I mailed these off the Las Vegas today, so I'm excited to see how Rosa likes them and when Ryu eventually wears them!

Let's Get Rauschy!

Earlier in the year, my younger cousin talked to me about doing a pair of customs for her friend Sydney's 21st birthday in March.  As a fellow March-birthday, I was happy to do it.  This is actually the 2nd pair I've done for my younger cousin, the first being a pair 4 years ago for a hip hop dance competition.  

Each pair I do is unique..."custom", duh! :)  These in particular were the epitome of just that.  These sneakers were to be "all-things-Sydney"!  Obviously, each pair I do has elements that the client likes, a general theme of an interest or hobby, but this pair wanted to included all of that and more.  I remember having the conversation with Andie, my younger cousin.  I asked her, like I ask every client, for basic theme and colors.  She sends me a text with "...pretty much a collage of everything she likes..." and then sends me the longest, most thorough email! lol! She wasn't messing around!  It was awesome because now I had this huge pool of ideas to pull from and really fill up each sneaker.  That was also the challenge: to still have it flow together.  

From the email, I got her favorite color (purple), mustaches, Portlandia, inside joke phrases, her twitter handle, Jason Mraz, her sorority, last name (Rausch), peacock feather, and date of birth to make the customs.  On these all-white Superstars, I was also able to customize the 3 stripes by giving some stripes shades of purple and some others text with inside jokes.  Even though I'm not in on the jokes, seeing "so many tacos!" and "1 classy son of a f*ck!" on a sneaker is pretty funny.  I added purple laces and lace holders as additional details as well.  

I sent these off to the University of Oregon, where Andie and Sydney are Ducks! Sydney received the sneakers just before she left for Spring Break and "absolutely loves them" (via text from Andie), so another successful client & delivery in the books :) Happy Birthday, Sydney!

Pacquiao vs. Pacquiao

So back in May, I helped out my cousin Jim with an event celebrating Jose Rizal's 150th birthday. I donated my sneaker customizing services for a silent auction and displayed some Jose Rizal sneakers too.

My cousin Paul won the silent auction and "cashed" in on his win this Christmas. We talked over the theme and came up with a pretty unique pair of sneakers. Paul's kids have a kitten named Pacquiao, and he liked the other Pacquiao boxer sneakers I've done, so we combined the 2 to create "Pacquiao vs. Pacquiao"!!

These all-white Stan Smith kids sneakers have their kitten face-to-face with Manny, a "title fight" sign, boxing gloves, and stars on the back heels. I gave them to Paul when I saw the fam over Christmas. These were actually the last pair to close out the 2011 year, and it marks me doing custom sneakers for 5 years. As a fun personal commemoration, I'm almost done making a photo/portfolio book with all the customs I've done. Coffee-table-book! LOL! :)

Purple-flavored Cupcakes for Hailey

Happy Holidays! Closing out this 2011 year, I have 2 pairs of customs. This first pair is a craft-trade that I'm pretty excited about. So these sneakers are for a friend's daughter. Hailey loves cupcakes and purple, so that was definitely doable, and I love cupcakes as well. Shout out to Cups in La Jolla! Aaaaaaanyway, since the theme was pretty simple, I made sure to add little fun details like sprinkles, the "H" and mini cupcake on the back heels, and "Hailey" and another mini cupcake right at the base of the laces. I added some dull-purple laces so it didn't over-"pop" the rest of the design, but it still tied it all together. Both sneakers were the same with variations of cupcake flavors. I dropped off these freshly-mades yesterday, so I'm excited to see how little Hailey likes them :)

California Love

So a few months back, my buddy Shannon wanted me to do some customs for her friend. Her friend's from Europe and had fallen in love with California after a visit. Shannon was traveling to visit this friend and a pair of Cali-Love sneakers were a must. This was a tall order: there's so much awesomeness about California and only 4 sneaker sides.

I didn't want it to look crazy, but a nice clean representation of some of Cali's finest and iconic landmarks. Shannon was kind enough to give me free artist expression and let me do my thing. So these all white Superstars have the Golden Gate bridge, palm trees, a beach scene with a lifeguard tower (think Baywatch, haha.), the Hollywood sign, and the outlined state of California. We Californians like the shape of our state.

These were a lot of fun to do. I've lived in California pretty much my whole life and love it. I think Cali-Love sneakers should be in every Californian's sneaker closet! Ahem... The bridge was by far my favorite section. It was also the most stressful. I didn't want all the cable lines to look like a mess. I added some other little details like the "Golden State of Mind", the heart with "California" through it (who doesn't know that song?!), and the quote "What's Your Dream?" (from the movie Pretty Woman - did you pick up on that?)

Anyway, Shannon had them mailed overseas for fear of airport-luggage-check-in-crushage. I've mailed sneakers across the Pacific to Hawaii for my first family-pack for Reese, Belle, and Makana, but this was my first international send-off :) Pretty special. Hope you dig 'em like I do!

Back on Display

A few weeks ago, my buddy who runs the Originals store in Costa Mesa asked if wanted to display sneakers in their cashwrap display case. They were running low on accessories, so the case was available! I had some sneakers there in the past, so it was cool to be able to show some stuff again :) The Yo Gabba Gabba and Pacquiao sneakers are from the past, but I decided to do a new pair too -- a junior version of the "Get Your Own Style". They have the same elements just on a kids Superstar. I like how they turned out -- clean chaos! So the case has 3 pairs and a few business cards. My favorite spraycan vinyl toy holds a card up as well! What's super cool is that within 5 hours of putting the sneakers in the case, I got a new client who wanted his own pair of customs. He like the cartoon Pacquiaos, so we made arrangements to hook him up!

Update: Green Day & Sneaker Show

So a while back, I did some Green Day-themed sneakers for my younger cousin Reese. He's a HUGE Green Day fan and I just got this picture of him wearing them out :) It's always fun to see how the sneakers look on each person. Lookin' good Reese!!

Also, I mentioned that I was displaying sneakers at Visual Art Supply last week. Here are a few pictures of the wall. I displayed ones that I've done before: Manila Royals and Rizals. Then I did a new pair as well, which I gave you a sneak-peek of earlier in the "Stylo Preview". They will be there for the entire month of August, so I'm happy to get some exposure and have people see my stuff :) I was able to get in touch with some people to possibly display some of my "Filipino-themed" sneakers at the upcoming Fil-Am (Filipino-American) Festival later this year. Any exposure and possible business are always worth it!

My Heart Skips Tee

So along with sneakers, I do graphics as well. My heart beats like crazy and skips a lot too. This design came to me and this is a revised version of the original...way different if you saw the first one. I decided to submit it to some sites for fun and one of them is threadless. My younger cousin has done it is the past and my other cousin is a pro on Riptapparel. So here's a go for me, but this site requires votes and whatnot. So I'd appreciate votie-votes and some love. Pass it along please and my heart will leap and skip for joy!! :)

"Stylo" Preview

There is a pretty cool independent art supply store on Adams Ave near my place called Visual Art Supply. They are always having art shows and displays, along with selling great stuff to get yo' art on! They are having a show at the end of the month for custom sneakers, hats, and vinyl called "Kicks & Lids Re-Covered". I'm gonna submit 3 pairs of sneakers and we'll see how it goes :) I've got 2 done already that I've had for a while, but I did a new one just for the show. The picture is a sneak peek until I know more info about the show and which sneakers get chosen, etc. I'll keep you posted. This pair of sneakers was, by far, the most extensive taping job I've done so far. Even so, I think they came out clean, simple and still keeps my "style".

Yo Gabbadidas!

So I'm trying to stay up on my sneakers and balance my life more. I had finished the Jose Rizal sneakers for my cousin's event up in Oakland, and I wanted to keep the momentum going as best I could. I've had these velcro kid's CG (Carlos Gruber) sneakers for a while and decided to have at it. Yo Gabba Gabba seemed fitting with the color scheme of the velcro ctraps. Silly characters and a boom box did the trick. They came out fun and playful. They are a kids size 1 if anyone is interested...otherwise, my niece will eventually get them when she grows into them :)

I'm not well-versed on Yo Gabba Gabba and I'm sure I could look up the characters for their offish descrip, but I'm not. So we've got one-eyed red guy, green fuzzy monster guy, pink weird girl, yellow robot guy, and the blue cat spread across both sneakers. Then I put the "Yo Gabba Gabba" logo and a boombox and the black thick-rimmed glasses of the dj guy. The background is a series of circles and dot and lines to add to the fun-feel. Good stuff. Thanks for the look!

Rizal 150

Hey hey! So these are the newest sneakers I've done :) I'm lucky to be involved in a great project put on by my cousin, Jim. Check it out here! June 19th will be Jose Rizal's 150th birthday and if you are filipino, you should know who he is! June 18th will be the big day of the celebration, and I was asked to be a featured artist! My sneaker customizing services will be auctioned off and these are for display.

These sneakers are on toddler size Stan Smiths. "Rizal" on one sneaker and his face on the other sneaker. On the insides read one of Rizal's quotes, "Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all." Also, you can't do a filipino-theme sneaker without stars too! Well, you can but it just doesn't feel right - lol!

I'll keep you posted once the event happens :)

Thomas2.0 for the Holidays

This is a bit late, coming off of the holiday season, but here's a picture of the sneaks I did for a lil' guy named Esteban. My co-worker's boyfriend's godson is a huge Thomas fan and a sneaker fan...so the answer was very easy :) Thomas + sneakers = THOMAS SNEAKERS!

This is actually the second pair of Thomas sneakers that I've had the pleasure of doing, so we decided to follow the same template. I changed up the track design and did a simpler text for the name. I changed out the laces too for a little extra fun, and I think they came out nice. They were all set to go, ready just in time for Christmas.

Always fun to do sneakers for the kids :)

Get 'em In!

So it's October - another season has ended, so I thought I'd do a lil update. The Green Day sneakers turned out to be a hit and I'm gearing up to start another pair of customs for tradework. I'm very excited to do these because the payoff is well worth it. Stay tuned :)

As you know, this is my sneaker blog and for the first time -- there are pictures of apparel! Just like I do customs for my niece, I also do graphics and custom tees too. I'll make her fun tees or tanks or "KB" tees (if you know me, you know KB), or a prep-swagg cardigan sweater like the one in the pictures below. I love this sweater!! It's got the year she was born and her initials in Old English caps. The front has the "Rep U" logo, and on the back is one of my fave lines "we run styles, no styles no run we". If any of you think you may know a little one who may wanna rock the cardi with their own year and initials, let me know about ordering one.

On the same note, with fall officially here, Christmas is right around the corner. For those who have been keepin' up on my blog (first off, thanks!) and those who know me, know that I do a pair of customs for my niece every year for her December birthday. I've done a pair for every year that she's been born. This year she will be 5, so the 5th pair is coming. With that said, I've got some open slots for orders if you've got some customs in mind for your own niece or nephew or kids :) Time flies, so I wanna put it out there. Lemme know! Thanks!

Green Day 2010

Green Day means --- GREAT DAY! It's always a great day when sneakers are involved. It's so great to be getting back into doing these customs :)

My cousin Trish's son Reese is quite the musician. He's a pretty talented drummer and Green Day is an all-time favorite of his. What better theme for sneakers than "Green Day"!

Reese would always ask questions about my sneakers, and finally he asked me to do a pair for him. We worked out a deal and here is the finished product! 4 sides on the adidas Pro Models gave me more than enough room to work with. Reese and I talked about specifics and I was able to incorporate 3 top albums that Reese liked: Dookie, 21st Century Breakdown, and American Idiot. The fourth side was a simple band logo.

Each side is pretty different, drawing from each album, but it all comes together for some rockin' Green Day sneaks!! Reese and fam live up in the Bay and I just happen to be going up for a few days. Just a plane ride from San Diego, these will be hand-delivered :)

The "Dookie" side was a lot of fun mimicking that cartoon-feel of the cover. The plane and explosion cloud were fun to draw. The "21st Century Breakdown" side was cool too cuz I liked the abstract skulls. Overall, it was nice to do this mix, but still having it all go together. Hopefully Reese digs 'em :)

Update: Mia meets Mulan

Happy Birthday Mia! Today I received this picture message from my cousin Paul. By the look on Mia's face, I'm happy to see the ballet flats were a hit --- or a kick! :) Great extension Mia - lol!

Mu-loooooong Time, but I'm Back!

Wow...that was cheesy...and wow, I've been outta the game for some time now! It's September 2010! Lot's have happened and kept me away, but hopefully I'll be in a better routine to get back in. And what better way to get re-started, then a pair of Mulan-themed customs!! I love Disney movies and these are for my cousin's daughter Mia :)

My cousin Paul has always talked about me doing a pair of customs for Mia, but it never came to pass. Finally, we got it together and planned it out -- pretty easily. Mia's birthday is Sept. 13 and Paul wanted something "princess-y" but "strong" -- and then he said "MULAN"! Knowing Mia, this soon to be 5 year old, didn't seem like the typical sneaker girl and I knew I had to fit her little growing style. I found some pretty dope adidas ballet flats with metallic gold stripes that are right up her alley. The real estate on the flats led for a lot creativity to maximize the space.

We've got Mulan on both shoes, dragon rockets, Cri-Kee the Cricket, cherry blossoms and the sword handle. I kept in strictly "Mulan", rather than "birthday-ing it up" and I think all the elements work together. I mailed them off last week up to the Bay Area, and yesterday I received a text from Paul saying he got them and they looked great! Yah! :) Hopefully Mia feels the same and enjoys her upcoming birthday next week! Happy Birthday Mia!

Ya Man! Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Sneakerheads and regular-heads (lol) alike :)

For work, we had a secret santa gift exchange and I pulled Martin's name out of the hat. Martin is one of the new guys at work and he has the cutest lil' 9 month old baby Imri. Martin loves reggae, has dread halfway down his back, and also works at a reggae record shop. I figured rasta baby customs for Imri would be a cool exchange gift.

I've done Rasta sneakers before, so I just scaled it down. We've got Imri's name, the Zion Lion, and fun rasta colors. Martin was pretty stoked and I'm excited to hear how baby Imri likes them! Picture to come soon :)

Merry Christmas again! Eat lots and wear your best sneaks to show out!

My Zebraface is 4!

Happy Birthday Jasmine! My neice Jasmine turned 4 on the 20th and, once again, another pair of customs :)

She LOOOOVES animals and loves Marty from the movie Madagascar. This year's model: Zebra! Stan Smiths are the perfect style and I think they turned out pretty "wild"! lol! We've got Marty, the "Madagascar" title, zebra print and a city-to-island-scape with a famous Marty quotation "This place is crackalacking!" They will go great with the matching zebra print jacket that my mom got her as well...it'll be zebra all over!!

Happy Birthda Jazzy!

Babykicks for Babycakes!

Now that I've gotten a chance to roam around San Diego a bit, I've come across lots of spots to eat. In Hillcrest, there is a pretty dope place called Babycakes. It's a chill little dessert/coffee shop that does cakes, cookies, cupcakes, coffee, or you can grab a beer or some wine.

A lot of the customs I've done are actually little sneakers for kids or babies...so I decided to do a pair of baby kicks for Babycakes! They didn't ask me to, but I thought it would be a fun way to low-key advertise and a cool thing for them to have. Besides, I'm a big cupcake fan :)

Today, my buddy Greg and I went to Babycakes to give them the sneaks. First thing's first, I had the "white bottom" cupcake with the cream cheese frosting. It had raspberries and chocolate in the cupcake....it was good! I talked with one of the guys who worked there and gave him the sneakers. Unforunately the owner had just stepped out, but overall I was happy to have done them. What they decide to do with the sneakers is up to them, but maybe I'll get a few more bites for baby kicks :)

One of my other favorite spots in Hillcrest is Figi Yogurt on University. No joke, I think I'm in there once a week and get the same combo of yogurts and toppings (if you want to know the combo I'll tell you - lol.) Maybe that'll be my next pair... For real though, Figi Yogurt is bomb!

Geez, next thing you know I'll be telling you all the spots that are good with restaurant reviews!! If that's the case, go to Terra for their lobster macaroni and cheese, and then to the Ruby Kitchen, where my buddy Greg cooks. Everything is good there and they are open late!

Rock it out Hillcrest!

Sneakers Go Great with a Barong and a White Dress

My cousin Trish and her husband Dennis have been married for 13 years. They never got to have their church wedding, so this past June they finally had the ceremony they always wanted. Trish told me that ever since she saw the movie "Father of the Bride" she wanted bridal sneakers, and how convenient that she finally knew someone to do some for her!!

The wedding was in Tahoe and it was awesome! I did a pair for both Dennis and Trish to wear during the reception. They picked out the Stan Smith sneaker and pretty much gave me freedom to design it however I wanted. The only things they really wanted were a specific smiley face logo that was also printed on their wedding souvenirs and the colors to go with the wedding theme: shades of blue. The outsides of the sneakers had their last name "Villafranca" and the smiley face logo, and the insides of the sneakers had "husband" and "wife" respectively on each shoe. The inside of the other sneakers matched the wedding "save-the-date" card with the drawing of the church on the hill, and I added a rising sun accent. I kept the colors to mainly navy and silver. Trish and Dennis were really happy with how they came out. I was happy to do it for them and actually turned out to be a decent wedding present :) Congrats Trish and Dennis!! Love you both!