About the Image(s)

I like creating houses out of strange objects, so I started with this black boot I saw in a shoe store. So, the story goes… The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe is an empty-nester now, and finally has time to sit by her fireplace knitting sweaters and socks for her grandchildren.

I started with the landscape shot as the background and placed the boot on top. Then it was just a matter of adding all the other elements until I had a scene I liked. Some of the shadows were added as I went along, and the rest were added after all the elements were finalized. As a final step in PS, I used Filter Gallery to add Poster Edges and Oil Paint. In order to give everything a softer color palette and some texture, I used the Brushstroke app; I liked the effect but it was too strong and became blurry, so I went back into PS and placed it as a new layer over the final PS version and reduced the opacity. That seemed to blend the best of both versions. The last thing I did was add a very slight vignette.