Transform Your Shoe Collection into Pop Art

Some people like to decorate their homes with photos of their loved ones. And sometimes those loved ones happen to be shoes. So sue me. Instead of booking a family photo shoot for me and my shoes, I thought it would be a bit more interesting, and perhaps a tad less wacky, to capture their essence with a pop art project.

I teamed up with Canon USA to transform cell phone photos of my most beloved pumps and sandals into pretty cool pop art to hang on the walls of my home. Check out how simple this project is!

Supplies:
-cell phone camera or regular ol’ camera
-photo editing software (I used A Color Story, of course!)
-solid colored card stock and patterned card stock if desired
–Canon PIXMA MG7720 photo printer
-adhesive of your choice (I used rubber cement)
-8×10 picture frame
-scissors

Step One: Take a photo of your shoes in a bright space on a white backdrop, like printer paper or a poster board. If possible, take your photos outside or in a room with windows on each side so you don’t get long shadows on your photo’s background.

Light colored shoes work best for this project because you definitely want the background color of the card stock to show through after printing the image of the shoe. I took photos of the profiles of my shoes because they looked most interesting that way. But if you’re photographing Converse or shoes that look better from above, then by all means mix it up!

Step Two: Edit the photos of your shoes to give them a lithographic pop art effect. I used A Color Story to adjust the curves and the contrast of the image as shown above. Then I applied a black and white filter (I used the Coffee filter – ha!) to give the shoe a gritty, high-contrast feel that works well with the pop art style.

Step Three: Print! After cropping your photo to fit how you’d like into an 8×10 space, you can choose to send your photos directly to your Canon PIXMA MG7720 photo printer using the Canon PRINT app. Or you can send the photo to your computer if you’d like to use additional editing software to further customize your document before printing. This printer is great because it is able to capture the darker values while printing on colored paper, which is important for this type of project.

Step Four: Cut out the printed shoe, leaving a border of the colored card stock around the edges for a lithograph effect. Cut the card stock you’ve chosen for the background to fit into your 8×10 frame, then glue the cut-out shoes onto the background. I chose to use a patterned card stock for two of my frames and solid card stock with this background texture printed onto it for the other two frames.

This pop art project is a great way to fill out a themed gallery wall or even to stack vertically in a narrow wall space that might be a bit awkward to decorate, like a space in between two closets, two windows, or beside a bedroom door.

Hey, I’ve never had the guts to buy an expensive pair of bubblegum pink Hasbeens, but thanks to a little colored card stock, I can enjoy a pair in the color of my choice! Shoes on my feet, shoes in my closet, and now shoes on my wall. Where will they go next? –Mandi

Author: Mandi Johnson. Photography: Mandi Johnson. Photos edited with A Beautiful Mess Actions.