shoe surgery: studded-out Cons

I have had my eye on these Converse Joey's from Free People for awhile now, but they're a little bit out of my budget and I always figured that someday I could try to make them myself. I forgot about them for awhile and then saw that my friend Vee had studded a pair of hi-tops. So cool. I had to try.

Luckily, I already had a closet full of Cons to pick from. Way too many. It was hard to choose. So I just grabbed a basic black low-top pair and got them ready to bedazzle. Speaking of bedazzling, you don't need a 'Bedazzler' or any other special studding machine to do this. All you need are needle-nose pliers, an x-acto knife, studs and a lucky pair of kicks.

I already had a few bags of silver studs in various shapes and sizes, so I decided to use some of those first. I also purchased some super rad yellow hexagon studs here, but I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with them yet. (Maybe I'll use them on a pair of Lo's shoes.)

So anyway, as you can guess, this is pretty simple to do. You figure out where you want the studs to go. Push them in and then bend down the prongs with the pliers.

A few tips, should you give this a try:

Start by unlacing the shoes and push the tongue all the way forward so you have room to work.

This can be tough on your fingers. Make life easier and use an x-acto knife to cut notches into the canvas to fit the prongs into, especially toward the back part of the shoe where the canvas is thicker. My prongs weren't very sharp for some reason, so I had to cut notches each time. If yours are sharp, this won't be a problem.

Pinch the prongs all the way in with the pliers (so they bend inward) so they won't tear up your feet when you wear them. I was really nervous that the pointy edges of the prongs would be sharp if I wasn't wearing socks, but they're totally fine!

Don't accidentally step on one of the studs with bare feet. Ow. This may have happened to me. Twice.

And that's about it. I'm pretty proud of myself for not splurging on the Joey's and making an equally rad pair of shoes from supplies I already had. I think I'll wear them a lot. (But seriously. I didn't have to buy a thing! How great is that?) Let me know if you give this a try ... I definitely want to see your shoe surgeries. Cut them up. It's fun.