Patch up the toes of kids shoes

I recently wrote about a new scooter that we had transitioned my two-year-old son to use. The old scooter had him sitting a bit low to the ground and was causing some major wear on his shoes, specifically near the big toe. I’m including a nice close-up photo here so you can see the damage. A lot of folks would just say throw some duct tape on them and forget about it, but even the toughness of duct tape doesn’t do so well when the point of application is being scraped 40 times per minute over gravel. 

Enter sugru. I started out by applying a single layer of yellow (sugru comes in black, white, yellow, blue, and red — and colours can be mixed to create other colours) to each shoe. I did this to create a patch that would cover the hole and to show up when the top layer (to be applied next) started to wear off. After 24+ hours, the yellow cured and was firmly attached to both cloth and rubber of the shoes. 

Next, I mixed one package of black with one package of white for each shoe. This made a nice, big blob of grey that closely matched the colour of the original bottom and nose of the shoes. The ends of the shoes are smooth and the edges of the sugru blend much better with the original materials (cloth and rubber). The colour match is quite good, and I’m very happy with the final results. James at Geekdad (http://bit.ly/LdR3LG)