If you're friends with me on Facebook, or if you follow me on Instagram, you already know about a fun little project that I did this past weekend. I am absolutely in love with it, and I'm SO excited to share how I did it. The best part is that it was E.A.S.Y! If I can do it, you can, too! I am NOT a crafter, but I hosted some friends the other night for a craft night. We were all just to bring whatever we might want to work on, and we'd eat, chat and craft the night away. I was successful in all three areas. ;-) Unfortunately, this also means that I didn't manage to get any pictures of the process, so I'll do my best to explain!
Isn't it FABulous!? Aaaahhh! I love it!! I know I am far from the first person to make DIY silhouettes, but I think mine are the best! (Of course it could be because I absolutely adore the little people that they represent!) Anyways... Here it is, step by step:
1. Take profile photos of your subjects. This is the only part of the process that I did ahead of time. I just snapped some photos of my kids with my iPhone while they were in the tub one day, since they were contained! Here are the photos I used.
2. Print your photos out the size that you want your silhouettes. I suppose there are probably a million different ways you could go about this. I didn't think too hard about it! The opening of my frame is about 10 inches tall, so I decided that I thought 6 inch tall silhouettes would be about right. I simply inserted each photo to an individual Open Office Writer (basically an open source Microsoft Word) document, and enlarged it until I thought it was close to the right size. Like I said, I was gabbing with my girlfriends while I did all this, so I didn't get too fussy with it. I printed my photos in black and white, on fast draft mode, onto card stock.
3. Cut out your heads! Haha! I just used the first scissors I could find. Like I said, I'm not a crafter, so I don't have nice craft-only scissors,etc. And I was too busy cleaning the house during the day to prepare for my craft, so the cheap scissors from the junk drawer were my tool for the evening. My oldest son's silhouette was the easiest to cut out, since his picture was the clearest, straightest shot. I did the face and then around the head, then just shaped the shoulder area how I thought looked best. Seriously, no science or math here... although this was an experiment... maybe this could be considered science. I <3 science! Aaaand, turning back around from that bunny trail.... Since my daughter and youngest son were both looking upward in their photos, I used their brother's silhouette as a sort of template for how to angle their necks, and to help determine where the back of sister's head should be! I wish I had photos to show you of this step, so you could see how I sort of faked certain parts to make things look right....
4. Determine which way you want your silhouettes to face and trace around your photo cutouts onto black paper. I happen to have a stash of scrapbook paper, so I grabbed a couple sheets of that. Since I wanted my silhouettes to face to the right, I flipped my photos over and traced them so that they were facing to the left. This way the non-traced-on side would end up the front, facing to the right. Make sense?? Clear as mud? Good. :)
5. Cut out your heads! Again! Do I even need to explain this step? I had traced around my printed, cut-out photos onto black paper, so now I just needed to cut them out. I went with a straight bottom, but you could shape them differently if you wanted.
6. Attach to your background. My silhouettes were going into the Norrlida frame from
What do you think? Are you going to try it now? Let me know if you do!
what a cute idea! I LOVE it!! we did silhouettes of all the kids in my class one year and had the parents guess which kid was there's at open house - it was so fun!
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