Pet Pop Art

I’m going to preface this by saying I’m a bad friend. Doodle and I, you know, have almost the same birthday. Which was in March. Which was like four months ago. And do you know when I finally had a chance to make Doodle’s birthday present? It was last week. And the impetus behind that was that Doodle would actually be in town for me to give it to her. See? Bad friend.

But while I may be a bad friend, I DO make wicked awesome birthday gifts, and I’ve had this idea on the brain for MONTHS.  I have been sitting on this photo frame since like JANUARY. Doodle and her husband the Cyclist have two cats about whom they are seriously nuts. Like if you think I am a little too obsessed with my dog, then you don’t know obsessed. Anyway. I got the inspiration from this idea at A Beautiful Mess and kind of ran with it.  When I told the Cyclist about my idea he proceeded to spend the afternoon sending me picture after picture of his beloved cats.

I boosted the contrast on the photos and resized them to fit in the appropriate spots in the photo frame.

Then I printed the photos out in black and white on neon paper. You can pick this stuff up at Staples or Wal-Mart. It’s important to print out two copies of the photo on two different colours of paper.

Once I had them all printed, it was time to start cutting.

First I cut out the photos from the paper I printed them on and made sure I had appropriate pictures to put in all the vertical and horizontal spots in the frame. There were eight spots and I had nine photos to choose from just in case I needed to do some manoeuvring.

So now you have your two photos. Decide which one is going to be your background colour and then just leave that one completely alone.

Take the other one and figure out what the object is that you want to show up against the background and carefully cut it out with a craft knife.

Then take the cut out piece and apply some adhesive to the back. I used a glue stick because I knew that the paper would then be pressed against glass and so I wouldn’t have to worry about it peeling off. Then you just stick the contrasting piece right on top of the other piece, using the image as a guideline. It means you can’t screw it up.

Then you just do it all over again.

Having the same image underneath means you can match up shadows and sticking it on makes it much easier.

Finally everything is cut out and stuck.

Then it’s simply a matter of putting the pictures in place.

The finished product – it’s leaning on a granola bar for balance at the moment.

I can’t decide which picture is my favourite!