How a Pair of Minions Shoes Started Kickz Queen Customs

How a Pair of Minions Shoes Started Kickz Queen Customs

The pair that started it all - my son's Minions Converse, painted to encourage him to wear shoes

For years, my passion for art and creativity took a back seat to a 9–5 office job. It paid the bills, but somewhere along the way, I stopped making time for something I’d always loved.

Then my son was born, and I became a stay-at-home mum. Our lives changed, and when he was three, he was diagnosed with autism, alongside other diagnoses. There was a lot to understand and adapt to. What I didn’t realise was that this chapter of our lives would also lead me back to my art.

It all started with shoes—or, more accurately, my son refusing to wear them!.

I painted his favourite characters at the time, the Minions, onto a pair of Converse, hoping it might encourage him to wear them. I picked up my brushes to help him, and in doing so, rediscovered something I’d lost.

The shoes were a success, they worked like a charm!.

Before long, I was painting shoes for his school friends too. What began with one little pair of Minions Converse gradually grew into Kickz Queen Customs.

Today, I run my business from home, creating one-of-a-kind, hand-painted shoes, bags and jackets that I send to customers all over the world.

Sometimes I still find it hard to believe where that first pair of shoes has taken me.

So here I am: a self-taught artist who rediscovered her passion in the most unexpected way. My son is my inspiration and the reason I embraced my creative side again. And let’s be honest, every time I see the Minions, I can’t help but chuckle at how far we’ve come. Art has a funny way of sneaking back into your life when you least expect it.

My son still has as many custom shoes as he could ever want. My hope is that one day, he might want to join the family business, in whatever way suits him. It would mean so much to share the creativity he unknowingly helped me find again.

For now, he helps with the smoke and light effects for my horror customs, adding his own special touch behind the scenes. It’s a small but meaningful way for him to be part of the creative world he helped bring back into my life.

I never planned for life to take this direction. But sometimes the journey changes unexpectedly, and you find yourself returning to a part of you that you thought you’d left behind.

For me, it all began with my son and a pair of Minions shoes.