Silhouettes

I liked the silhouettes I made in December so well that I immediately decided to make some for my mother-in-law for her birthday.  I thought that they would seemed to fit her decor aesthetic.  So when my nephews were over for a day in January, I planned ahead and put each boy against the wall while I took their picture from the same spot on the floor, so that their pictured heads would have the same relative sizes as they do in real life.  (There's gotta be an easier way to say that!)

Fast-forward to April, two days before my MIL's birthday party, in fact, and I got around to printing out the pictures and getting to work.  I had actually pre-purchased my supplies - well, most of them.  I had bought one of the frames (the mats came with the frames, and each opening is 5x7) at Wal-Mart several weeks earlier, but wanted to check to be sure it looked good before buying a second one.  I had the scrapbook papers and the acid-free stickers.  So first I printed out the biggest boy's picture in 8x10 size and checked the size against the mat opening.  Hmm.....seemed too big - it barely fits.  So I printed out all the pictures in 5x7 size and cut out the heads.

*I should point out here that I printed the pictures on cardstock, so that it was easier to trace around later.  And I didn't crop the pictures at all, because I couldn't figure out how to crop them exactly the same and keep the relative sizing as mentioned earlier.

I really should have just printed out the smallest boy's picture in 5x7 and checked it against the mat opening, but I didn't.  (In the end, I printed all 4 pictures in both 8x10 and 5x7 size, and I ended up using the 8x10 pictures for this particular project.  However, all is not lost, as I'm going to use the smaller ones for a set of smaller silhouettes for my grandma and my sister-in-law, so I'm pretending that I planned it that way.)

After each head was cut out from the picture, I decided which way I wanted them to face and then traced the head onto the back of the black scrapbooking cardstock with a pencil.  I have to say that it showed up really well!  I cut out the traced outline, attached the background paper to the back of the mat using acid-free photo stickers, and then used the same stickers to attach the silhouettes to the background.  You can't see it from the picture here, but I also used a scrapbooking pen to write each boy's initials just under the back of the neck.  Just in case their doting grandma forgets what they look like or something. :)

I think they turned out really well, and I'm thinking that I'll be making more in the future.  I really like how they look on black with a patterned background.  And I also like the idea of putting initials and the year next to the silhouettes.  I can keep doing this for years!