It was quickly discovered by the Tomb Raider cosplaying society that Lara Croft's boots actually exist in real life as Timberland's Charles Street
boots. Unfortunately they are now out of production and hard to come by, but I was still fortunate enough to find a pair, though with the wrong
colors and other details that needed modifications.
Preparing the boots
After everything had been recolored and put back together again, the
boots were laced back up the same strange way that Lara laced her
boots up for whatever reason.
By removing the outer nozzle of my airbrush, it would spew out a
splattered stream of mottled paint that was applied around the boots
in roughly the same filth pattern as seen in the video game.
To replicate the cracks in the mud on the tip of the boots, it didn't
work too well to scrape lines into the durable paint, so a thin black
pen was used to draw false cracks onto the surface instead.
And with all the appropriate crap in place, the boots were completed
and ready for another adventure.
It didn't take much effort to modify the boots, but this process could at least show other Tomb Raider cosplayers that it is quite possible to
alter their boots if they also can't find them in the correct colors.
After also painting the eyelets and buckles to gold color, an airbrush
was used to make them look weathered with a dark shadowing effect.
The leather laces on the zipper sliders were made from a slightly more
orange hued leather to match with the color of Lara's laces.
The small tree logo was carved into the zipper sliders with a very thin
grinding bit on a rotary tool, then a square hole was cut through the
end of the sliders for holding the missing leather laces.
The zipper sliders and lace hooks were also painted gold colored with
a paint pen.
To replace the text logo on the zipper sliders with the tree logo as
seen on Lara's boots, the surface was ground down until the indented
text had been removed.
A roll of masking tape was placed around the boot as a safety
precaution for not grinding into the leather.
The dye soaked right into the leather and was going nowhere after
that, matching up the color to what is seen in the video game.
The boots I purchased had an overall lighter color than Lara's boots,
while also having copper toned details instead of the gold toned
details they needed to have.
An alcohol based dye was made from whichever brown and black
permanent markers I had laying around.
The laces took a bath in the dye for starters.
Thanks to
The Tomb Raider cosplaying society for identifying Lara Croft's boots.
Timberland for making the boots.
Project duration
4 days.
Costs spent
Leather boots - 249,19 NOK.
Permanent markers - 0 NOK - Already available.
Gold paint pen - 0 NOK - Already available.
Black acrylic paint - 0 NOK - Excess from my SHODAN life-size figure.
Total - 249,19 NOK.
If you found this tutorial helpful, please support my future projects on Patreon.
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