Ponder - Does that pad you made cover just your toes or part of your foot as well? Sounds like a good idea if I can make one that covers about 1 - 1.5 inches behind the toes (area where first couple eyelets are).
You won't be able to glue/stick velcro to the felt, only to the toe cap, but you could have the pad be longer regardless, with the forefoot part just hanging out a bit sans-velcro.
Ponder, I'm curious now. What did you use for padding?
I have too much room above my toes too, and it's always bugged me. I've tried using a footbed, but while it solves the toe problem, it ends up raising my heel too much. So I've always wondered if there was a way to fill out the toes from above and I'm glad to read that someone else has done it.
I made it the pads out of industrial strength velcro (one side sewed onto the pad, the other side stuck to the inside of the toe cap):
http://www.homedepot.com/Tools-Hard...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053
And layers of microfiber cloth for the padding, it's nice and puffy, soft and light:
You should easily be able to find both at any decent hardware store.
Then I got it all sewn together by my local dry cleaning/alterations place once I had all the pieces cut to just the right size. It will take them literally just minutes, they shouldn't charge you much. You want to use quite a few more layers than you'd think you need, once you get it sewed up well it takes up way less volume. If you have your own sewing machine that's be even better, because then you could really tinker with exactly how many layers of cloth you need to get the fit just right. I also customized it a bit so I had 1-2 fewer layers over my big toe, to give a more anatomical fit. I even have thin little flaps coming down the side of the toecaps for extra comfort (think the flaps on the footbeds of the APX skates, except coming from the top instead of the bottom obviously. Had these made well before Bauer introduced this feature btw
).
I'll take and post pictures of mine when I get a chance, the nice thing about the velcro design is they're super easy to put in and take out of your skates, so you can take them out to dry after every use so they don't get smelly. I love em, and all in (velcro, cloth and paying dry cleaner) they probably cost only around $20ish bucks ($10ish for velcro, $3ish for the cloth, $10 for the sewing though she only wanted to charge me $5).