Create a custom pair of Keds

Pick Tool - used for selecting objects.
Shape Tool - used for manipulation of shapes.
Crop Tool - used to crop images.
Zoom Tool - used to zoom in and out of images.
Freehand Tool - used to create freehand drawings.
Smart Fill Tool - used for quick and easy fills of objects.
Rectangle Tool - used to create rectangles.
Ellipse Tool - used to create ellipses and circles.
Polygon Tool - used to create polygons.
Basic Shapes - used to create basic shapes (arrows, flowcharts etc.)
Text Tool - used to insert text.
Table Tool - used to insert tables.
Interactive Blend Tool - advanced blend options.
Eyedropper tool - used to sample colors.
Outline tool - used to manipulate outlines using different thicknesses.
Fill Tool - advanced fill options.
Interactive Fill Tool - more advance fill options.

One of the most important aspects of creating a pair of Keds is the design.

Effectively what you have to think about is creating a piece of material that will be placed onto a 'blank' Ked to create a shoe.

The first thing to do is to open Corel 4 and click on 'New Blank Document'

You should try and think of the overall design and map out what you want to achieve, in your mind, prior to starting any Corel 4 work.

Imagine how you would do this on a blank piece of paper.

For me, the first part is the background. While not as important as the design, it effectively is the main color of the Ked. You have to choose if you want the background to be a solid color, multiple colors, or a blend.

Once you've started, Corel 4 effectively gives you a blank piece of paper to work with.

The first thing I did was to create a large rectangle. Clicking the Rectangle Tool icon, I stretched out a rectangle. You have to think about the product you are designing when creating the 'material' so a rectangle that is longer than taller is more appropriate for my design. Now I've decided the fact that I want to create a blended background, I have to think about the colors and 'fill' the rectangle.

Now I've decided the fact that I want to create a blended background, I have to think about the colors and 'fill' the rectangle, and also how to fill it!

Using the Fill Tool icon I decided to use Fountain fill. The other options were intriguing, especially the texture fill, but I wanted a subtle blending effect that didn't detract from the main concept.

I was then faced with more choices - did I want a linear fill? Or a conical fill (I used this in another design and it is also a cool effect).

I chose to fill with two colors and have it fade from yellow to orange. You can be really creative here -you can have multiple colors and different ways to fill - I tried to make it look nice, but again not become the main part of the design.

I clicked OK and produced a filled rectangle. At this point I could have actually created the Ked, it would have looked pretty cool using this design.

However, I still had a concept in mind and I wanted to try and move forward with the concept. I saved the design at this point just in case I wanted to start again from a color template.

Now I had to decide how I was going to implement my design. I could use standard shapes using the Ellipse Tool, the Polygon Tool or the Basic Shapes Tool, but instead I decided to play around with the Free Hand Tool. Clicking the Free Hand Tool I decided to go with the Artistic Media - this essentially gives me a lot of pre-defined shapes and brush strokes.

I simply used the mouse to draw a line on the design, and then clicked one of the 'brush strokes' on the right had side bar. There's a lot you can do with these items you create.

You can change the color, using the color bar on the right; you can change the fill settings, using the Fill Tool icon. It's fun to play around with these items, but there's simply not enough room in this Lens to go through every option. Suffice to say that I messed around with this for about thirty minutes and came up with my 'Smiley Face' concept.

However, I wasn't quite happy with the mouth, so I used the Pick Tool icon and clicked on the 'Mouth' object.

I tried moving it around a little, or resizing it, but I still couldn't quite get it right. So I double clicked on the same 'mouth' object to be able to rotate the object. (You'll not that as you click on objects, the 'edges' of the object will have little icons or arrows that show you what mode you are in; move, rotate etc.). I rotated the mouth a little, to give it more of a smirk rather than a pure smile.

Finally, after a lot of tweaking and messing around I was happy with the final product; starting from a vague concept of having a funky smiley face, I had come up with my material to use on my Keds.

At this point I suggest crop the image and save the file as a jpg; another option is to do a screen shot and manipulate in Paint and save as a jpg.

Zazzle.com is a very easy to use website that is innovative, but very intuitive.

The first place to start is to go to your 'Dashboard' - you can get here by clicking 'My Zazzle' in the top right of the screen.

Log in to your account if you don't see 'My Zazzle'. You'll have to sign up for a new account if you're not registered.

Join Here

Click on 'Create a Product' and scroll down to the product you want. I clicked on Keds shoes.

There's no reason why you can't pick any other product - the design process for both Corel 4 and each product is the same; you just may have to change the size or shape of your 'material'.

The first screen you come to is perhaps a little daunting. It shoes some great examples of what you can accomplish and also gives you options for different types of shoes.

I clicked on Women's lace up under 'Create a shoe' - note that if you click on styles, you'll come to a similar screen with examples, and you'll see a 'Create Shoes' button - you'll come to the same 'template' using both methods.

The screen you see now is the main design screen - as you make changes, the picture will change.

There are many options on this page, and the best thing is to experiment - I'll walk you through the main process.

You can actually create some pretty cool Keds using the Colors & Prints section here - but as I had already put a lot of work into my material I ignored this option and clicked the 'Customize it' tab.

This is where you'll begin applying your design to the shoe.

By now you've created an 'image' and saved it to your hard drive. Click on 'Add images'. This will open up a box with any images you've previously used.

You can use different images on different parts of the shoe - so if you wanted to create a 'three dimensional' image you could effectively do so - although it would take a lot of hard work!

As I have just created my new design and saved it to my computer, I clicked on the 'My Computer' button.

I then clicked the 'Select images to upload' button. This opens a dialog box that allows me to find and double click on the picture I want. Clicking OK will then upload the picture.

This will apply the picture to the selected part of the shoe.

Click on the design button above the picture of a shoe and then if needed click on some of the icons to move the image, resize it etc. I usually click fill.

I note that you should be careful here - if you have to 'fill' too much your picture may become fuzzy or pixilated.

For guidelines on picture specifications on Zazzle click here

Using the pictures below the large picture, ensure that you apply your design to every part of the shoe (where appropriate).

The method is the same for each time, although as you have already uploaded you're image, you should see your picture in the My Zazzle Images section.

Using the pictures below the large picture you can also click the 'View Pair' button - this gives you a larger image of the shoe from the angle you have selected - I find this very useful during the design process.

You also have other tools such as zoom that will assist you. Hopefully, you'll end up with a finished product.

Once you are done you have two options. You can simply add the Ked to the cart and buy it yourself.

The second option is to actually Post the item for sale and try and make some money with your mega design.

You are presented with a final screen that has various options:

Categories: You can select two categories where your product will be listed for sale.

Product Line: You can choose a product line - in my case I create a product line in my Dashboard called Keds and added the new shoe to this Product Line.

Title: be creative - simply typing Ked will not help -try something fun.
Subtitle: add more information as required.

Description: add a lot of information here; perhaps inspirations etc.

Tags: add some relevant tags here - for me that would be Smiley, Abstract etc.

Royalty Percentage: the more unique the design, the higher the Royalty you probably can charge - I tend to use 15%.

That's it - you're done - click Post It and you're product is on sale. Now go out and market it!