A lot of people wonder how you go about stripping the leather on your kicks to prepare them for paint. Preparation is essential to any paint job. Doesnt matter if your painting your kicks, your car or your house. Proper preparation will make all the difference and will help when you lay down your colors. It can make or break the job. If your gonna do it make sure you do it right if you want a quality result.

This guide is by RobL off the Crooked Tongues forums. Much props to RobL for putting together the guide with pictures. Follow the jump for the quick walkthrough and the pictures to go along with it

First you start off with your kicks…In this guide a pair of New Balance 574’s are being used.

The first thing RobL did was mask off the white midsoles to avoid black smears. RobL has come to realize acetone dissolves the encap section so he took the time to cover that as well instead of taking the chance of the color smearing.

Make sure your masking is tight. Like i said, if your gonna do it do it right. This is an essential part to the process. If you dont want your colors to smear spend the time to lay down some tight masking. And go over it to make sure its right on the edges and nothing will leak through.

Get yourself a few bottles of acetone and start to strip the sections you want. When using acetone be sure to work outside or in a well ventualted area. Acetone is very flamable so do not smoke while doing the job and dont breath the fumes in if possible. During the stripping process take a nice soft white cloth and wipe away the areas to see what your working with.

This is the result after about 2hrs. Make sure you keep soaking the cloth in the acetone, its going to take a lot of rubbing to strip the sections you want. Your cloth is going to get coated up with the leather your rubbing off the sneaker so make sure you keep using a clean part or a new cloth every so often. Its pointless to use a dirty cloth the whole time and it will add to the time it takes you to finish. Make sure you scrub till your arms are about to fall off though. A lot of sneakers have multiple coatings, the top layer which makes the shine wont be so hard to remove, its the nitty gritty youll get to under that which will take a lot of rubbing.