SO I HAD THIS IDEA

Besides wearing hats,i dig wearing boots. I have a large collection of motorcycle,cowboy, & short "booties". In fact,my "day job" requires me to wear military boots. So when i saw these studded combat boots online by Free People that were selling for $388 dollars,i thought...OH,HELL NO! there's no way that i'm going to pay that,when i know that i can copy it! And that's what i did :) I went to ebay and found some new combat boots & got them for $25 (score!). Studying the picture,i noticed that their boots were a bit worn in. I didn't have time to drive my boots through the mud,so the the next best thing was to use a pumice stone (ghetto route from sandpaper) & start scraping the hell out of the leather. Not too bad looking,i thought. Now dealing with the studs was a huge challenge. i have a "Bedazzler",but that wasn't gonna cut through this thick leather. And being the lazy person i am,i couldn't see myself painstakingly punching holes to hand apply those studs. Next best thing? call you favorite cobbler! :) There's a shop i've gone to on Melrose that sell handmade leather goods (clothing,boots,jewelry,etc),and the owner's pretty damn handy with applying studs. I brought the pic of the Free People combat boots & asked him if he could duplicate the design. "No problem", he said in his heavy Persian accent. "Awesome!" i replied....but how much?? He mulled over it & then told me,$45. I thought about it,& thought about it,then realized that that was a fair enough price. It took him a week to do it & i was on pins & needles waiting to see them. As you can see from the last pic,they don't look too shabby! So my version of these pricey boots only cost me a grand total of $70.....word!