Custom Silhouettes

A while back I made custom silhouettes for each member in our family. I know what you're thinking...."So you mean you made silhouettes for you and Mark, right?".....oh no, my dears, the kitties got their own silhouettes too!! (what....they're members of our family too!!) This is a simple little QUICK project that yields an absolutely adorable result.

First up, I took everyone's picture. To keep it simple I just used the Photobooth function on my MacBook. 

So, as you can see, lighting or which direction you're facing doesn't really matter when taking these pictures. The only thing to keep in mind is to make sure that you get the right angle so that you can see the full profile. (Tip - a toy helps to get your pet looking the right direction....the trick is to snap the pic before they start swatting at the toy!)

Next up, I printed these out (directly from the computer onto white printer paper) and then carefully cut them out following all of the lines of our profile. I left most of our body on at this point so that I could decide how I wanted to cut it to give it that classic silhouette look.

I then looked at other silhouettes as a reference to decide how I should trim off each of our bodies around the neck line, taking into consideration how it would best suite the picture. After severing our bodies from our head (har har), I took my custom profile stencil that I had just created and traced each of them onto black cardstock (AKA, scrapbooking paper). Then I carefully cut out the traced profiles from the black cardstock and surveyed the rough draft of the silhouettes.

At this point, I needed to decide how much detail I should keep in each one. I had left my messy hair that was coming out of my bun from my original picture, but in the end I trimmed that hair off of my silhouette. The messy bun just doesn't translate very well into a silhouette picture! (Tip - silhouettes work best for ladies and girls when you have your hair pulled back...I'd suggest either a bun or a ponytail) I also originally left the whiskers on the kitties, but again, that didn't translate into a silhouette very well so those got trimmed off in the end too. I'd suggest leaving more details in when you trace and cut your silhouette and then tweaking it until you're happy with the amount of detail.

All that was left to do now was to "mount" each silhouette onto some colorful paper (again, I used scrapbook paper here) and pop it into a matted frame.  In anticipation of this project, I had previously picked out some cheap frames from Michael's when they were having one of their 50% off sales on frames. I wanted each frame and each colored paper to be unique just like the silhouette of the person (and/or animal) it represented.

These lovely little silhouettes now live in my office area downstairs and I have to say:  Each time I look at one of those little kitty silhouettes I have to smile :)