DIY Custom Sharpie Shoes

Hi there! I’m so excited to share how to make these awesome DIY Custom Sharpie Shoes with you! These can be made as simple or as detailed as you’d like them to be. You can also make them just with basic shapes and designs like I did, or make them for your favorite sports team or fandom.

How much of the shoe you design is completely up to you. I just did the toe area since it was a very detailed pattern, but you can do the whole shoe if you like. Worried you can’t draw? I’m following patterns from The Mindfulness for Kids Mandala Drawing Book, and we have lots of detailed drawing tutorials on here as well that are super easy.

Note: The drawn-on shoes are NOT waterproof. You can use a sealer or waterproofer on them, but be careful because the solvents in most waterproofers can cause the permanent markers to run. I just make sure to only wear mine on dry days!

Here’s also 12 ocean animal step by step drawing tutorials for more drawing fun!

DIY Custom Sharpie Shoes

Supplies:

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White canvas shoes (new or very clean)
Patterns or designs to guide you
Pigma Micron .05 Pen (this is permanent and doesn’t bleed like the Sharpies)
Sharpie markers (ultra fine point is best for little details)
Plastic shopping bags or packing paper to stuff the shoes
Pencil (note: you can’t erase pencil on shoes!)

Start by taking the laces out of the shoes and packing the toes (and insides if you’re going the whole shoe) with plastic bags or packing paper. I’m using our Mandala Drawing Book as a reference for some pretty patterns. Start sketching the lines of your pattern on the shoes, going back and forth between the two to keep the designs even in size and placement. Keep in mind that you can’t really erase pencil on shoes, so everything you draw in pencil will eventually be covered by the black Micron pen.

Continue your drawing, adding different designs that fit onto the shoe well as you go. Don’t be afraid to flip the shoes around or hold them in your lap to have a good position to draw in.

When the majority of the design is done, you can start inking. You can also finish the whole design before you start drawing the lines in pen, but I like to get the main part done, and then see it in ink and color before I add more designs. To ink the lines, just trace over them with the micron pen. Let the pen dry at least 20 minutes before you start coloring with the sharpies.

I want to touch on a few things with sharpies. They are great, and come in a large variety of colors. However, they love to bleed and run and just generally misbehave. See the pink flower above? That’s what happens when you color right up to the lines with am ultra fine sharpie. If you look at the purple, I colored right next to the lines, but left a teensy tiny gap. The ink spread into that gap after a minute, and I had a cleanly colored section. Also, the longer you hold the pen to the shoe, the more ink will flow out and it will bleed more. So keep that in mind while you’re coloring. Like for these small circles, I just did a little dot in the center of the circle, and let the ink fill it out on it’s own.

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Here’s where I went a bit off the rails and started free handing my designs, going in with pencil first and following up with ink and color. I wanted some white space on the shoes, so I outlined every design with a white border, and then filled in the middle areas with a pink sharpie. I used a standard one, but I recommend sticking with the ultra fine tip ones as the standard sharpies bleed A LOT on canvas shoes, so I had to be super careful and still ended up with blotches.

Continue around, adding designs as you go and coloring in. I decided that my pattern was so busy that I wanted to leave the rest of the shoe white to highlight the design. However, do as much of the shoe as you’d like!

I love the way these turned out!

If you aren’t into wearing a lot of color, you can even just ink the lines, and leave the shoe like that! It’s a great way to add some flair to your style while keeping it more simple.

However, while my socks don’t always match, my shoes always have to. So I finished inking and coloring in the second shoe. Both shoes took about 3-4 hours to do, but the time investment is totally worth it!