ToyCyte: Toy Culture Collected

You can DIY everything from Dookie to train cars, so why not try your hand at customizing an iconic shoe? Doc Martens has a Flashy website that supplies the virtual tools to paint, spray, tape, burn, letter and stencil your own 8 or 14-hole boots. This is great, great SFW fun. DM provides all you need to publicize your design (blog code, poster templates) and get your footwear voted to the top. Two designs (one chosen by popularity, one chosen by a panel of experts) will be made into actual, purchasable boots. Check out the gallery, which is growing past the 300+ page mark. (In the time it took me to play around–see bad art below–and blog this, it went up 4 pages.) Repost this and spread the word. If you’re an artist, do up a template and send me the code. It would be cool to get someone from the designer toy community onto a boot. My DC Kaws kicks are all scuffed up.