How To: Make Low Cost Pop Art

ManMade reader Jordan sent in this great how-to from the music website The Needle and the Groove. Frustrated by the ubiquity of poster images and the high pricepoints of original artwork, the two bloggers/friends got creative. " I’ve always been ridiculously frustrated trying to find posters for my dorm room – everyone has the same posters (sorry, but John Belushi is a bit played out) and none of the posters really depict artists I want to hang on my wall. So when preparing for Duke a couple of years ago, I hit eBay (the greatest site of all time) to find some posters of Outkast, Talib, and Dizzee Rascal. I managed to find some sweet posters, and then ran into the high-cost of either framing them or beating them up beyond repair with 3M mounting strips (something I hate doing to “rare” posters).... I picked up a Talib Kweli piece at $40, but decided to figure out to how make them on my own. [Here's] a quick how to of how to make your own for around $25 (with supplies to make many more). "

The tutorial is basically a "how to make stencils with Photoshop," of which there are a few around the net. I actually did one a few years ago for making custom stencils for t-shirts. But this knowledge is good knowledge, and it's fun to see all the different approaches people take when using the same tools.