Fun Ideas Using Silhouettes

A few months ago I taught at a digital scrapbooking retreat and showed how to create silhouettes from your own photos in Photoshop. Silhouettes are a big trend right now everywhere, especially in home decor, so it was fun to come up with some personalized art projects and gifts using silhouettes of our kids.

There are lots of great silhouette tutorials online, my friend (and fellow Crafting Chick) Nikkala wrote a post about it awhile back if you want to check it out: Silhouettes.

So for Mother’s Day this year, I decided that I’d make some silhouette art for our moms, because we all know that their grandchildren are their favorites. I had some old frames laying around, so I got out my trusty spray paint (in glossy black and a satin white) and gave them each a little makeover.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We gave this one to my sweet Mother-in-law Judy featuring her six adorable grandchildren. I really love how it turned out and loved using classic black and white colors for this project.

This is the one we gave my mom, with her three grandchildren. I went a different route with hers, using a colorful patterned background with white silhouettes, knowing that it would match her kitchen.

Both projects use silhouettes but have totally different looks—and I love both styles! And they were both big hits with the grandmas, that’s for sure!

For our home I used the same profiles of our kids (that’s the beauty of digital photography/photoshop, baby!) but used different patterned backgrounds for each child, all in a turquoise and white. (I shared these on The Crafting Chicks a few months ago.)

I printed these at Costco as 16×20, and mounted them on white foam core. Then I hung them on the wall using those 3M Command Strips, no nails.

Here are the digital files, just to show you more up close (the colors are a bit off, but you get the idea).

It’s a fun thing to have hanging up our big staircase, makes an impact, plus it was not very expensive!

Lastly I made another piece with all of our kids together, printed it as an 8×8 and it is framed and sitting on a shelf in the living room.

(credits for paper and scalloped heart: Digital Scrapbook Memories)

Just some fun and simple ideas for using silhouettes as artwork in your home and as gifts! I like them. 😉

Oh, I almost forgot!! For a ton more silhouette ideas, check out my Silhouette board on Pinterest! There are so many cool things you can do, it makes my brain spin.

(Haven’t heard of Pinterest? It’s my new-ish favorite thing! Remind me to tell you about it sometime!)