Hello, dear friends! I’m jumping on today to re-share one of the first projects I ever completed for our house six years ago: custom silhouette art of our girly-girls. Being a DIY/home decor blogger, I tend to change things a lot. All of the Pin-spiration I see every day makes me change my mind quite a bit about the things in our home! (Do you have this problem?) So I know I must like something a lot for me to keep it for six years. This silhouette art has been a focal point in our family room all that time, so I thought I’d share it with you again.
Fast forward a handful of years, and our home is less a work in progress than it once was, this blog has grown by leaps and bounds, and our kids are now finishing 3rd and 1st grade. But I still like these pictures!
Custom Silhouettes
Nap Rating = 2 naps
Tools and Materials
- Camera
- Exacto knife
- Cardboard
- Spray paint in gloss (color of your choice)
- Newspaper
- Fabric or decorative paper
- Scissors
- Iron (if using fabric)
- Spray adhesive
- Picture frame and mat (I used old frames and just spray painted them as well, but you could buy new, of course)
Steps
- Take several profiles pictures of your subject (I used our kids but you could do pets, too) at close range (so they almost fill the frame on the screen of your camera. Lighting doesn’t matter.
- Choose a picture frame size. This will dictate how large to print your photo. Choose the best profile from your photo shoot, then take the memory card from your camera to a photo-printing kiosk (like at Target or Wal-Mart) and print out a copy of the picture in the size you’ve chosen. I chose an 11 x 13 frame with a mat for 8 x 10 pictures, so I printed the girls’ profiles out as 8 x 10s.
- Place the photo on a piece of cardboard (or a self-healing mat if you have one). Cut out the image with an Exacto knife, taking care to cut around details like wisps of hair.
- Lay the cut-out image on newspaper and spray paint it with high-gloss paint in the color of your choice. Let dry.
- If you’re using an old frame, take this opportunity to spray paint that as well.
- If you’ve chosen to use fabric for the background of your silhouette, iron it.
- Cut the fabric or decorative paper to a size slightly larger than the opening of the picture mat.
- Coat the back of the painted image with a thin coat of spray adhesive and mount it to the fabric or decorative paper.
- Place all in the frame.
This is seriously the easiest, quickest way to fake the look of a custom silhouette (which can cost a fortune to commission, by the way!) and is also a wonderful way to represent your kids when they’re young.
I’m thinking of changing the background of these because I’m planning on painting the wall a richer shade of turquoise. Do you think I should update the silhouettes to show the girls a little older?
Here are some other ways to dress your walls with DIY art:
These are fantastic! I've been wanting to make silhouettes of our girls … and the doggies. Thanks for the inspiration.
u can also use a light against a plain wall and trace the shadow….just put your paper taped to the wall and have ur child sit sideways in frront of paper and add light and trace shadow