child silhouettes

It's less than 3 weeks until Christmas and my head is spinning with all of the projects I have on the go right now. Many of which are not ready to show you yet so I thought I'd post a picture of something I made with my boys for Father's Day earlier this year. 

Silhouettes

It was easy to do - and best of all - inexpensive.  I love how each one is so unique that you can identify who it is. 

To make a silhouette of your own, there are just a few supplies you need: 

- a digital camera (with basic editing software and printer)

- computer paper

- glue

- decent scissors

- a frame (I bought these ones at the dollar store)

- two pieces of cardstock in contrasting colours

You can really play with colour here, like for example, you could use white paper on blue for a Wedgwood effect, or maybe black on cream for an antique look. My oldest son's favourite colour is green so that's what we went with. The only suggestion I would make is to avoid papers with busy graphic prints, because you want the focus to be on the little details around the edges of the silhouettes. A subtle pattern could work as well.

It's also worth noting that if you spend a bit extra on the paper, it shouldn't fade with time.


In my experience, the simplest way to create the silhouette is to take a picture of your child's profile against a blank background or wall. Upload the picture to your computer, resize it, and print out a very low res. copy onto regular computer paper. It might take you a couple of attempts to print the exact size you want so play around with it. Then cut the child's profile out very carefully along the edges. Include stray hairs, eyelashes, and eyebrows - the more details the better!

I recommend leaving a bit of the torso in the image (see the silhouette pictured on the right hand side above) so that you avoid the 'head floating in space' look as in the one pictured on the left.

Once you've cut the profile out, you are ready to trace it onto your piece of cardstock. If you used a lighter colour of cardstock, you could have printed the profile picture directly onto the cardstock, cut it, and turned the page over to skip a step. 

Cut the cardstock silhouette out, again, paying close attention to the details. Then glue it to your contrasting piece of cardstock and stick in into a frame. And you're done! Easy peasy! You might want to hold onto the profile print-out in case you want to make more because this not only makes a great gift for parents, but for grandparents as well!