Burning Man: Tribal Stenciled Boots

I recently found these Playa-perfect boots at my favorite GoodWill. Seeing as how they're the same color as Playa Dust I decided to get them. Which, honestly, is the only quasi-good reason I could come up with to rationalize owning yet ANOTHER pair of boots. Well that and the fact that they're flat which will make it super easy to trek, bike, and dance across the Playa in these suckas. The only downside is that they're a bit too plain for my taste so I decided to Playa-fy them a bit....



I Googled 'Tribal Stencils' and was immediately drawn to this design...



Shown above is my resized design, transfer paper (blue) and contact paper.



All traced out!

Time to cut...


It took hours...I suppose I'll get faster with more practice! And, yes, cutting circles out with an x-acto knife DOES completely suck!

And the Final Product...


I'm pretty happy with the way they came out! As you can see there is a bit of over-spray but, dude, this is Burning Man!

I used Montana Gold Acrylic Spray Paint. And after researching I decided to take the top coat off of the leather with finger nail polish remover so the paint would set into the leather a little better. Acetone was actually recommended but I'm lazy like that so I went with what I had on hand. I tested the polish remover on the inner zipper area first to make sure there would be no major color shift in the leather. So far the paint seems pretty solid. No cracks or flaking at all. I washed the boots (as recommended by Commander) with soap and water to try to remove some of the remaining sticky residue and when that didn't work I rubbed them down with Olive Oil...totally worked! The paint showed no signs of rubbing off or flaking with either of these treatments.

And now that the stencil-cutting induced blister on my finger has finally healed I'll add another stencil to the toe area later today...because I apparently have nothing better to do with the 18 DAYS I have left before I leave for the Playa!!!