Tip and Technique Wednesday

Hello Blog Friends!

It's Wednesday and I'd say we are half way through the work week, or something to that effect, but I am on vacation so I hope the week is long and peaceful!  However, I do have a tutorial for you.  This one is all for me, though I do hope to inspire a few of you at least.

I really wanted to create a silhouette of my little guy to hang in my scrap room, why I wanted to do it right now is beyond explanation as my room is a mess and not looking to be organized any time soon!  All I can say is, I'm sure you, my fellow addicted will understand!

Anyway, I set about creating this silhouette and thought I should document it to share with you.  Bear in mind, this is what I came up with, of course you can do what ever you think will work for  you.

 First, I took a picture of my son against the window, to have a better contrast of the outline.  (Look the one time it doesn't matter if your child's hair is messy!)

 Then using the photo editing software that came with my computer, I converted it to black and white and played with the brightness, contrast, shadows and highlights of the photo a bit to make the photo more dramatic.  This just makes for easier cutting.

 I decided to print my photo as a 5 x 7, you can do what suits you.

 Next, start trimming out the outline of your image (this is when you can trim off any messy or wild hair if you choose).

 This is what you end up with, I kind of like this image, I may need to do something with it for a future project.  But for now it will serve as a tracer.

 Depending on which way you want your silhouette to face, you can lay it right side up or upside down onto a sheet of black cardstock (I say black as silhouettes are typically black, but you could have some fun with different colours too.

 This is the traced outline.

 Next trim out that outline.

 Since I was using white core cardstock, I decided to further enhance that by sanding the edges of my silhouette.

 Next I added a subtle pattern paper to a dollar store 8 x 10 canvas, and inked the edges.  I knew I wanted my finished project to be black and white, so I embellished it accordingly.

 Here it is hanging on the wall.

Here is a close up of the fairly simple embellishment cluster.  I made the flower using a technique in a tutorial I demonstrated on my own blog over a year ago, you can see how to here.

Now i just have to finish unpacking my scrap room and start hanging things on the wall so I can hang this too!

Thanks for coming by the blog to see what I have been up to!

Laura
xoxo