Silhouettes (the low tech way)

For my guest room/studio space I wanted to do silhouettes of my boys for a little pop. There are about a million ways to make silhouettes, here's how I did mine...

Silhouette Tutorial 

First start by taking a million profile shots of your subject, I put my boys in front of a very contrasty background and since I live where the sky is almost always foggy and white I just do it in front of our glass doors. 

Then upload your photos to your computer and go to you basic photo editing application, I use picasa, if you have it you could use photoshop, but then that's a whole different tutorial isn't it?

Once in you editing program crop your photo and turn the shadow scale all the way up until it looks all silhouette-ish like my darling boy there.

Print photos in black and white and cut, cut, cut

Once your silhouette is cut out lightly tape it to your cardstock.

I used the traditional black but they come out really fun if you use a brightly colored paper. I wanted to do mine in yellow but the Mr. didn't like the idea as much as I did.

Apply mod-podge or regular school glue to the back of your silhouette and place it on your background. I used those boards I painted to match my dresser.

smoosh (that's the technical term) out the wrinkles and bubbles. if it seems really wrinkly then place a sheet of wax paper over it and place it under a stack of books for a day or so to dry.

find something oval (because they are really hard to draw freehand!) and trace it onto your plaque

then with a sharpie paint marker, draw over your oval. I drew a little box on the bottom for a label too

I decided to write no. 1 &  no. 2 for my boys but you could always put their names or the date, whatever strikes your fancy! I might go back and add a little more embellishments to the oval, but I think I'll live with them for a while to decide what I want.

It may be low tech but it's still super cute!

Peace and paper scraps!

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