Silouhettes

For our living room, I didn't want to put up a bunch of pictures because I wanted to do a collage of frames in the connecting dining room.  However, I did want to have something in our living room to show our family, so I made these silhouettes.  They were so stinkin' easy and I love how they look.  I'm sorry about the picture quality, though.  These photos were taken with my phone because Brandon left out the camera charger, which Nicholas then found and promptly hid we can't find our camera charger.

At any rate, here's how I made them:

First, I took a digital profile picture of each of us.

I knew I wanted them to fit in my 5X7 frames, so I opened photoshop and cropped them down to 5X7, leaving enough room around their silhouettes as I'd like to have as empty space in the frame.  My cropping settings were 5 in. by 7 in. at 300 dpi because I do everything at 300 dpi.

Then I printed out the cropped image just on regular computer paper using a low ink setting. 

 

Next, I used some two way tape to lightly secure the printed image to a piece of black card stock.

Then I just cut out around the printed silhouette, leaving a fancy curving torso/bust (not sure what to call that part, actually).  

Once you have it cut out, you remove the computer paper from the card stock and adhere the card stock on a background paper using craft bonding spray or two way tape, and then frame it!

I plan on updating the silhouettes on our walls about once a year because I just really like the look of them in our living room!  I have also seen people make Halloween and Christmas silhouettes this way by printing off pictures of haunted houses, witches, black cats, Santa, Christmas trees, etc. this way and putting them in frames to display with the rest of their holiday decorations.