For this pair of 1s, I wanted to really go for the aged look. What I did was use a Blue dye on all Blue panels before using the Game Royal Blue painting. After that was completely dry I took a dremel and sand paper to all edges to give it a more rough/frayed look.

At the time of my shoes, I did not have any official heel counter so I made one out of a cheap cutting board.
The stitch work was not the best on account of me not thinning down the edges of the leather which as a result causes the thread to break numerous times so I had to knot it off and continue where I left off.

With this being my first pair and not a hand stitched single pair, I was not confident in making my own tongues from scratch and went to reuse the ones from my donor pair.
While I do not regret that, the height of them was greatly shorter than what I had wanted as the later iterations of the Jordan 1 are similar to a Mid top thus having a shorter tongue. The original 1985 ones had a taller one, which depending on the factory that produced them, would sit about 1-1.5 cm higher than the collar.

I had lasted a few shoes by this point, but was definitely still getting the hang of it. Because this is a more stiff version of the veg tan leather like the original ones, it was not as easy to shape over the last. Some consequences of this would be not having a perfectly rounded toe and heel, as well as a waist that wasn’t as tight as I would have liked.

For a completed first pair, I was definitely happy with the end result but knew I still had a lot to learn. I do plan on remaking these in the future with higher quality materials, but that will have to be put on the back burner.

1985 Royal