Small Kitchen Update: DIY Framed Pineapple Art Photography of Sassy Pineapple

Let me start off with a disclaimer:

I won’t call this post a tutorial, because I had a hard time explaining my process in Photoshop. I can only show you the steps I took up until then, sorry.

Now, with that out of the way, I was literally holding my breath all night (well, maybe not all night) waiting for this post to go live. I was so excited about this project! I’ve shared with you that I’m decorating my small apartment kitchen. I showed the inspiration for the decor I wanted to add, and shared some progress pictures of what’s happened since I painted the kitchen.

Since I’m a renter, I have to get extremely creative about decor and updates, because I can’t make permanent changes. I have a lot in store for my teeny, galley kitchen, but can only do small bits at a time, as my current design projects take up much of my time.

So, I added the shelves over my sink and I LOVE them! I still have to paint the sides white (where they were cut at Home Depot), but they’ve already made such a cool impact to the space.

My idea was always to put a framed piece of art in between the shelves and initially I wanted to frame a drink or food recipe. But, since I rarely drink and don’t cook very often, I thought that it wouldn’t be much of a reflection of me.

I really like pineapple art and have been searching for a while for the perfect piece.

So, because I have such a fantastic, creative brain weird imagination, I thought that I would create my own pineapple art. But, not just any ole art, I wanted something fun and crazy that would make me smile each time I walk in the kitchen and stand over the sink.

Enter dear pineapple.

She’s rather sad and looks a bit beat up, so from this pic I can see how it would have been hard to understand how I’m going to create my anything with her. Her name is Tasha, by the way (well, it was Tasha, before the knife fell on her and her insides crawled on my plate, but I digress).

I hit the jackpot from Target a few weeks ago and got 24 awesome frames in different sizes and styles for $120 – yes, you read that right! Target does not like me to have extra money.

One of the frames was a 15″ x 18″ wooden frame matted to 11″ x 14″. It fits PERFECTLY in between the shelves over the sink.

Dear pineapple – meet perfectly sized wooden frame. It’s going to make you beautiful!

Bare with me as I try and explain this process.

I wanted the image to be of the pineapple on a solid or patterned background with sassy lips hand-drawn on it.

I googled “sassy, red cartoon lips” and found one that inspired me. I tried super hard to draw these darn lips on the pineapple, but the textured surface wasn’t having it. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure why I thought that would work. Then, after that awful idea, I figured I could just add the lips in on Photoshop.

After I struggled to find a pretty, patterned paper that I thought would be perfect for what I was going for, I decided to go with a solid background. Before I actually tried drawing on the lips, I wanted to see how the pineapple looked on a brown craft paper background…

Way too plain. Then, I tried a white background (the backside of Christmas wrapping paper)…

Still plain, but the pineapple will steal the show anyway.

I gave this sneak peek on Instagram last week. (follow me there if you don’t already)

As you can see, I set up my “modelling studio” on my counter against the refrigerator. I just taped one end to the refrigerator (a few inches taller than the pineapple) and secured the other end to the counter with a detergent bottle. Then I started letting Miss Tasha do her thang!

So, after I took a lot of photos, I wrote down the ones that I wanted to try and manipulate in Photoshop. After looking back and forth through those, I finally found the one that I wanted to use.

Now, here’s where it gets hard to explain. If you’re already familiar with Photoshop or similar programs, you’ll be fine, but if you don’t have much experience with image editing software, you’ll need to google some tutorials.

For those of you who know how to use image editing software (and those that just went googled and learned), I won’t go too deep into exactly how I edited the image, because you should edit the image to what you want yours to look like. I wanted mine to be really bright, and since I actually took photos in my dark kitchen at 2am, I had to manipulate the contrast and brightness. I also increased the saturation, to make the colors in the pineapple pop more.

Once I got the image looking the way I wanted, I searched online for “free cartoon lip images” and found one that had both cartoon lips and eyes and thought, “whoa, I can add eyes, too”!

And, that’s what I did. I copied and pasted each of them into my edited pineapple image. I enlarged the lips to fit over where I drew them on and added the eyes above.

That’s it!

Now, to be simple, if you take your photo close to a window when your home has a lot of natural light coming in, you might not even have to edit your image much (in regards to brightness). You also don’t have to add the lips and eyes. You can make your image more sophisticated with just the pineapple (or any other fruit) in it’s natural form.

I am IN LOVE with how mine came out. It’s much brighter on this side of my tiny kitchen and Miss Tasha definitely puts a smile on my face.

I can’t wait to style the shelves around it! I threw up a bunch of stuff on the shelves for the purpose of this photo, but I have to narrow down exactly what I’ll be using to help with my storage issue. So happy that the shelves are up! I am a little torn on whether or not I want to keep the frame black or paint it gold. Thoughts?

What’s left for the kitchen:

• find a larger rug
• put up the framed chalkboard on the black wall
• find more fun kitchen art to go on the black wall
• put foods in storage canister to go on counter
• accessorize

So, are you going to create your own fun, pineapple print? What do you think of mine? Would you keep the frame black or would you paint it gold?

Till next time,