Papercraft Onitsuka Sneaker

When you’re broke having a hobby can be very difficult. I think to even consider yourself a hobbyist you have to have a collection to begin with. Yet this requires money to even buy the things you want to collect. But not to worry, there are still some hobbies you can have that require no money. Papercraft is the perfect hobby where you don’t need to spend very much; all you need is some glue, paper and scissors. I’m pretty much a newbie when it comes to papercraft, even though I have been doing it for many years. To get back into the swing of things I decided to start off with a simple sneaker. The sneaker I chose was the Mexico 66 by Onitsuka Tiger. The template is made by Shin Tanaka. Shin is a famous papercraft artist that is not only talented but also very friendly by encouraging others to take up the hobby by offering free templates of his artwork. His background story is also very interesting because he started doing papercraft as a kid when he couldn’t afford to buy the sneakers he liked.

To keep faithful to the original sneakers I also used the website zappos.com to copy the placement of colors on the sneaker. This website is amazing because it offers pictures of the sneaker from various angles. Once you print out the template creating or building the sneaker takes about a couple of hours. Like most crafts, taking your time is what gives you the best results so I recommend you take your time and cut neat lines. I also recommend you cut and glue the laces individually because when you’re done it makes the sneaker look so much better. The only problem I had with the Mexico 66 template was that the outer sole didn’t match up when I tried to glue the top part of the sneaker on to it. However I just cut around the parts that didn’t fit and it still ended up looking pretty good in my opinion. This template was fun to make and I can’t wait to make more in different colourways.

Mexico 66' colorway:

http://www.zappos.com/onitsuka-tiger-by-asics-mexico-66-birch-green

Mexico 66' template:

http://shin.onitsukatiger.co.uk/pdf/paper_Mexico66.pdf

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cljH4eYzEq4