Place images in side nav bars

Another (hopefully) quick question about Customizr template. I would like to put image buttons into my left side nav bar instead of the text links from the default or a custom menu.

I tried creating a custom menu and putting an <img src=”myimage.jpg”> direct link into the title of the menu item and it did call the image, but the side bar navigation looked weird and there was a little bouncy caret character next to the image. It’s pretty clunky.

It looks like the behavior lies in the class “menu-item menu-item-type-custom menu-item-object-custom menu-item-106” but I’ve exhausted my creativity there.

Does anyone have any ideas for modifying the side nav bar to accept standard image buttons?