I'll admit it...I take pictures of food with my smartphone. Lots of pictures. I'll make other people wait to eat so I can stage pictures of their delicious food too. It's one of my favorite activities, right up there with eating delicious food! Unfortunately, this means my phone is filled with food photos I never really use for anything. Fortunately, I own a printing company, so I can create awesome artwork when I get inspired! With these simple instructions and the help of a friendly, local printshop like mine, you can too!
Without further ado, I give you...The Wall of Food! An ever-growing display of food pictures in my kitchen!
This project is very easy, and can be completed start to finish in a few hours, including all the printing and foam core mounting. If you were to purchase the printing and foam core from AEC Printing, the whole project would cost just under $30.
Your simple steps to food photo happiness:
1) Take pictures of food with your cell phone or other digital camera (or your dog/cat, children, garden, old doors, church spires, city skylines...really anything that has a theme).
2) Select your favorites, or plan to print them all! The above display started with 18 photos, but grows a little every time I go out to eat!
3) Email the photos to your friendly, local printshop or plan to print them yourself. A high-quality laser printer is a better option than an inkjet printer for this project, since you want the images to be as durable as possible. Laser prints are typically much cheaper than inkjet prints, making this project even more affordable!
4) Ask your printer to print out all the photos at the same resolution on durable, heavy paper or cardstock. For this project, I scaled all the photos to 300 dpi using Photoshop, then printed them on 110# matte cardstock. That first part is important...make sure you check the resolution of your photos, or ask your friendly-local printshop to do this for you! Many smartphone cameras take photos at 72 dpi, which looks great on a screen, but very pixelated when printed...however, photos can be scaled down to a smaller size, which raises the dpi, resulting in a crisper, better print. Because you are printing a large number of photos, each one doesn't have to be very large to make the final display work. The largest photo in the display above is 8"x9".
5) Trim the photos out close to (but not on) the image edge. Leaving a little white edge makes it much easier to trim the photos exactly once they are foam core mounted. You want your prints to look like this when you are ready to mount them:
6) Mount the photos on foam core. You can either use spray adhesive or self-stick foam core. I definitely recommend trying self-stick foam core if you haven't already...it is SO much cleaner and easier to use than spray mount, and results in a much more permanent bond. When you have all the photos on your foam core, it should look something like this:
7) You're only a few steps away now! Trim each photo to bleed (that means all the way to the printed edge) using a sharp blade and a straight edge. There is a trick to getting a nice, smooth, cut edge on foam core...let the blade to the work! Don't press too hard, and take several passes with the blade. This avoids snags and prevents the foam center of the foam board from clumping up as you cut:
8) Locate the center (right to left) of your intended display wall and make a small pencil mark. Decide how far up the wall you want the center of the display to be, and mark this as well. The center line of my photo wall is 4.5 feet above the floor. Because you'll be using a level to hang the photos, you don't need to make a
9) Determine the best way to adhere your images to your wall. For my photo wall, I used Command Strips since they are easy to remove and self-stick. I found it was best to have at least two strips per image...not because the images are heavy, but because using a single strip meant the images weren't always laying flat against the wall after hanging. Apply the strips (or whatever hanging method you prefer) to the backs of your prints.
10) Using a straight edge, align your first photo with the center of your wall at the height you choose for your photo wall centerline. If you're not sure what that means, take alook at this image. All the photos line up along a horizontal line:
11) I did not lay out the images in advance, and I "eye-balled" the distance between each image (roughly half an inch). If you are more precise or want the images in a particular order, lay them out on the floor before mounting them to the wall. Once you have the first image up, you can use a level to place each additional image so they are all straight:
12) Get your cute dog and a cup of tea and enjoy your new display! Or...go take more pictures of food :)
Fantastic idea! I think I will have to do this, but instead of food I want to use pics of my clients pets.
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