I’ve been meaning to do this project ever since M was a little guy. Finally I’ve gotten around to it, and it is going to make a fabulous Father’s Day gift!
I remember my Kindergarten teacher doing this with all of her students (what a patient woman she must have been!). She used an overhead projector, and had each child stand in front of it in order to cast their shadows on the wall. She had large pieces of black paper taped to the wall and she traced the shadows onto them. My memory is a little fuzzy about how exactly she traced the shadows onto the paper, but I remember standing very still and how absolutely adorable the finished pieces were, and how much my parents ooh-ed and aah-ed over it. :) I’d guess they were about 9" X 12”, finished. I decided to make a much smaller version for my husband.
To do this with M, I first had him stand in front of a sunny window, showing his profile, and snapped a quick picture:
Much, much more do-able for him than standing still for a long time!
Then I played around with it in my photo-editing software so I could see the details and have good contrast, and eventually printed it out at the size I wanted. I had already bought little wooden plaques at Michael’s, the faces of which measure 3”x3”, so I cropped closely around M’s profile and printed the picture out at just under 3”x3”.
I (oh, so carefully) cut out the profile, then taped it, photo-side down, to a piece of heavy weight black construction paper, and used a sharp pencil to trace around his profile, adding in eyelashes for definition of his eye area.
I placed it face down, by the way, so when it was finished the opposite side would show him facing the same way as the original photo. That’s not necessary, I guess, but somehow felt “right” to this OCD mama. ;)
I ended up (after several that weren’t turning out just right) using a craft knife for the detailed areas.
I carefully cut out his sweet little silhouette, decoupaged some patterned paper to my wood pieces, then decoupaged on the silhouette. I finished it all off with 3 coats of clear varnish.
They are a little shiny because the sealer hadn’t dried yet.
I just couldn’t wait to take pictures!
Sweet, no? I made one for myself while I was at it because I know the one for Daddy will be going to his office. And then I made one for my parents. I’m on a roll, anyone else want one? Heehee. ;)
If I do this again in the future, I will probably go with a larger size as the detail areas were really hard to get right. Overall though, I really enjoyed this mama-craft!
Have a beautiful day! :)
