DIY: My Neighbour Totoro Shoes

Hello hello so this was my Sunday Arvo / Rainy Day project yesterday – TOTORO SHOES!

I’d seen a few pictures on Pinterest on grey shoes decorated with the Totoro theme. Being an anime & totoro fan myself, I decided to give it a go on these AUD$3.50 K-Mart shoes. Really you can’t go wrong with a $3.50 pair of shoes. Worst case, it looks ugly and you throw away $3.50 with some experience on DIY-ing a shoe.

Here’s how I did it:

Face Inspiration From Pinterest

Materials:

1. A pair of grey shoes,
2. White paint (I used acrylic paint since that’s what I have at home)
3. Black Sharpie
4. Black ballpoint
5. Toothpick
6. Paper

Spirits Inspiration From Pinterest

Method:

TOTORO:

1. Prepare the picture of Totoro you want to add to the shoe i.e. I used this image. You can either print or do what I did: trace this straight from my screen on to paper. It turned out to be the perfect size for where I want to put the drawing.
2. Cut out the totoro outline
3. Trace the outline onto your shoe. You can be as detailed or as simplistic as you want.
4. Mark dots on the shoe of where the eye, nose, mouth are supposed to be. I did this by placing the template on to the shoe and then folding where I have to mark. I marked the top of the eyes, a dash for the nose, and a dot at the top, bottom, left and right of the mouth.
5. Finish the outlines with ballpoint – this means draw 2 circles for the eyes and connect the dots on the mouth and I added the teeth lines here
6. Paint the whites and wait to dry (time of drying depends on paint type) – eyes & mouth
7. Outline everything with sharpie!

SPIRITS:

1. Draw hairy black blobs – I drew them like how I would draw daisies since the sharpie bleeds a little.
2. Draw eyes on the blobs using a toothpick (or you can use anything with a point) dipped in a little bit of your white paint.
3. Wait for it to dry and you’re done!

Here’s the results:

Front of the shoes (Totoro Face!)

Back of the shoes (Spirits!)

This probably took me half an hour to do not including the wait time. Outlining the drawing takes literally 1 minute.

This was a very easy, quick & cheap DIY. You can also use this method not only to do Totoro shoes but for any design!

What do you guys think?

Lots of Smiles,

Sita