We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Glenn ONeal a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Glenn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I began trying things out on my own with very little knowledge what it is that I was supposed to do. Then, after making a few mistakes along the way I began taking what I learned and using that plus hours of research by research, I spent a lot time on Google reading articles and studying and watching lots and lots of YouTube tutorials. If I could go back. I would have watched a lot of YouTube videos first before even attempting to paint on the shoe. Those videos and articles are pretty much. what helped me expand beyond just painting sneakers.

Once you learn the basics you realize that you can use those same steps for prepping and painting a shoe on things like furniture clothing and other miscellaneous items. But the biggest thing I had to overcome before all of that is getting over, self-doubt and telling myself I wasn’t good enough or able to accomplish these things. The other was learning that all the different materials required different ways of prepping and different types of paint and paint mixtures to get the job done. Once I overcame that things began to fall into place .I was able to take that confidence and explore other avenues like making clothing, and then eventually taking my ideas from streetwear and sneakers that inspired me and transferring them over into laser cutting and engraving..

I think my biggest regret is not learning the skills sooner and also not having a social media at the start. If I had mine years ago and had the knowledge to years ago, I could have had my work out there we earlier and who knows how much further along I would be today. So my advice to anybody who has an idea out there is don’t sit on it. Try to take the time to find a way to make it a reality and remember that it’s not gonna always be easy, but it will definitely be worth it

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

It started with a love for sneakers. Somewhere between seven and eighth grade, I started to take a closer look at footwear.. I don’t know how or why I did it. It was just something that became intriguing to me. From there I started to study the different designs, models, and colorways of various shoes.

Growing up my mom didn’t believe in spending lots of money on shoes and clothing and I knew this hobby was going to be exspensive. At the time I was only allowed one pair per school year and if I was fortunate enough sometimes a second, slowly gained more and more pairs just by the pure luck that my foot stopped growing in 6th grade.

Soon came high school which was the start of a turning point. I had gotten deeper into shoes, the history and the story behind them. Mix ingthat in with my growing admiration for art and artist, new ideas were being born. I wasn’t really good at drawing pictures or painting. Instead I use to sit around from time to time imagining different colorways and themes to base them off and put onto a shoe. I’d always sit around with friends and family and ask questions Like “ How come we never got them in this color or that color?” “Why is it that they only use the material on this pair and not that pair?” From those conversations I learned that I was not alone.

It wasn’t until years later in my adult life that I discovered sneaker customization. In the beginning, believe it or not I had no social media. I would be on sneaker forums looking at photoshop mockups of sneakers in colorways i wish existed in real life. At one point I even took a pair of canvas jordan 1s and grabbed some sharpie paint markers and decided to color on them to make my own color away.. Looking back at it even though that wasn’t a bad idea and the color stayed on, the shoe looked horrible. Mostly because I just colored random colors in random sections with no rhyme or reason to it.

Then one day I discovered customizers who could take your shoe and paint them for a fee. I was excited to know that I could get someone to turn my idea into a reality.

Shortly after I began reaching out to different customizers to get my ideas on to a shoe. Then came the eye opener, the price of getting the work done. I remember sitting in the living room, reading the email response of this one customizer. At the time he wanted somewhere between 300 and 500 to put one color on a shoe. It was at that moment that my girlfriend decided to chime in. I’m not sure I fully remember what she said word for word, but she said something like “Why would you pay someone to paint a shoe for you when you can do that yourself?” At the time I didn’t think I could be any good at it. I’ve always been known to have shaky hands so the idea of me painting a shoe sounded far fetch.

A few days later I decided to give it a shot. I had no idea what I was doing. I went to a fabric store and grabbed a can of fabric spray paint. I went home with the mindset of, I’m gonna do this and it’s gonna turn out just the way I wanted it too. Unfortunately it did not. After hours of spraying the shoe and getting nowhere because the paint did not stick I felt defeated. A couple days later I got a package at the door. It was an airbrush gun. Followed by a package of Angelus paint. I had no idea how to use it or exactly what I was going to do with it. my girlfriend let me know that she had bought it for me to start airbrushing sneakers with..
we spent hours taking turns spraying layers of paint on this shoe. For the first time an idea in my head was brought to life exactly the way I envisioned it to be. But there was still one major problem. Turns out airbrush is a really hard to maintain. I think altogether I broke maybe about five of them. From then on, I decided that I was going to mostly use the paint brush for all of my work. As it turns out even with shaky hands if you just use a little bit more focus on what you’re doing you can still have a clean paint job..

From then on that started practicing on pairs for friends and family members. I create in my Instagram page @sneaker.envy so that people could see my work. I shared some of my knowledge with friends, who also had an interest in the same hobbies.. I tried my hand at making clothing just based on an idea I had in my head. I took that knowledge that came from customizing sneakers, and I transfer the things that I learned from that and inspiration from other art and things I see on a day-to-day basis and use it to create different objects, jewelry, coasters, ornaments, signs, labels, or whatever else I can think of with a laser cutting machine.

I think one of the biggest joys of it all is, I can help somebody bring their idea to life in some way, shape or form.. Not only just that but also the fact that people enjoy and appreciate the things that I come up with that are made from ideas of my own as well. Sometimes there will be people that are more excited about what I made than I am.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

It’s not always easy. Every idea is not a good idea or will turn out exactly as planned. Just because you have a good idea, does not mean it will open doors for you anywhere or get you anywhere. Don’t be afraid of the rejection aspect of it. That doesn’t mean that anything that is created is bad or wrong. Sometimes there are things that people don’t understand until later on down the road about your work. Inspiration for things can come from any and everywhere. It could be as simple as a conversation with some friends. Something you saw what you were outside.. You could even get inspirations for something you saw in a pile of junk. You could just be staring at different paintings and realize that you can take certain elements out of each one and put them together and create one thing totally different and new or just from that on your own. It all depends on the perspective of the person who’s looking at it.

I think some people look at it and say oh you can just get up and easily make whatever it is that comes to mind or owe you can just get up and make whatever, and make money off of it and make a living. The reality of it is if you want to make something and make money off of it, it still takes a lot of work and a lot of effort. Those ideas still have to teach resonate with others outside of just you in order for them to work that way. I think most importantly you just have to enjoy and love what you’re doing that way, even if you don’t do it for a living do you still have that drive to keep going.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I think social media comes with a bit of luck honestly. A lot of it is finding and reaching out with people who have the same interests as you. Making sure you post often which is still something I struggle to do a lot of I don’t always post everything. Don’t worry about followers. One of my IG pages that is for laser engraving only has a couple hundred followers and it still does thousands of dollars in revenue so don’t let the amount of followers you have dictate whether or not you can make sales. If you know you have something that’s amazing and worthwhile to share with the world don’t give up on it continue to push it for as long as you can go.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @sneaker.envy , @infamouscutsdesigns