Ally Aldridge: How I did my book foot stack photo

Have you seen my #footstack pic on Instagram? Check out the feed @Nic_Reads_Inheels for my heel stack inspiration.

I only discovered #footstack very recently. It is a pic of someone balancing books on their shoes. When the #CampNanoWIW prompt was a #shelfie pic, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to give it a go.

I had so much fun doing this. And, when I posted it people asked, are they your legs, your books, your pic, how?

The answer is Yes and this is how.

The original pic

I wasn’t going to share this pic but here you go.

The books I bought from Amazon, Book Festivals or won on Instagram. They are all from my never ending TBR pile.

Since having children, I don’t have many heels. I also tidied away the ones I did have and have no idea where I put them. These shoes are my work ones from Clarks.

The red stockings were bought years ago from Ann Summers, back when I felt more daring, and haven’t been seen outside the bedroom.

I did need help to get this pic. My husband stacked the books whilst I giggled upside down and tried to hold steady. My selection was rather ambitious and I realised this was my limit… no more books.

He then took the pic for me. He actually took quite a few as we tested my balancing skills at different degrees of steepness. We found it looks better the straighter my leg are. Posing like this was a full on workout.

How I edited the pic

Pic Monkey App

I used the Pic Monkey App to remove the background using their Cut Out, Smart, tool. It was super easy.

Unsplash

Unsplash is my favourite site to get free photos. I found this photo of a pretty yellow wall by Mona Eendra from Copenhagen. Yellow is one of my brand colours so this was perfect.

Photoshop Mix App

This app enables you to layer images together. I created a project and added the wall as my first layer, then my cut out image as the second layer. I then cropped it to a square and adjusted the two layers until I was happy with the positioning.

I had never used this app before and it was very straight forward. I figured it out without watching the tutorials. But, I’m going to return to watch them later to discover more.

Instagram App

The final edit was done using IG’s filter Clarendon. Then, I added my comment and tags and posted it.

View this post on Instagram

There were lots of giggles creating this pic. Have a fabulous bookish weekend. X Can you guess which of the two tagged authors I have met? #bookstack #bookishlife #bookishfeatures #bookishnerd #bibliophile #booknerd #bookpile #shelfie #tbr #booksarelife #shoestack #footstackfriday #booksandheels #campnanowiw #worldbookday #worldbookday2020 #shelfietime #yafiction #yafantasy #fantasybooks #yalcbooks #felixstowebookfestival #worldindiewarriors #bookstoread #somanybookssolittletime #coreadingvirus #reading #footstackchallenge #footstackfriday #footstack

A post shared by Author Ally Aldridge (@redfae) on Apr 24, 2020 at 1:19pm PDT