Skip to main content

Me and my shadow!

Please feel free to listen (or watch!) this song while reading this post. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyEf1Lp7Byk


I have always thought silhouettes were such lovely and understated works of art. I would be fascinated by the people who did it at Disney World, Kings Island, or Central Park. They could cut your silhouette out in minutes! I decided I thought it would be fun art to hang in our humble bedroom.







Our bedroom is a work in progress. These silhouettes are only the second thing I have hung on the wall, so I am taking my time with it. We did get around to painting in over the summer. It went from drab and boring, to vibrant and living.








It was amazing to me how the paint actually made the room look much bigger! In a house cursed with small rooms, that is indeed a blessing.






I started out with some frames and material. The frames were fine as they were, but several accent things in our bedroom are white, so I opted to paint them. The material...well, I want to use it behind the silhouettes, but I need your opinion. Which do you think would look best as the background? Or, should I leave them as they are with a white background?



I was not sure how I was going to capture the silhouette, as my love was was leaving to play basketball. But, I quickly took a side pic of him and he took one of me. He is good an humoring me. :-)






I pulled out the laptop and uploaded the pics. Then I used Picasa (a free photo editing program) to make them black/white. They also have a feature where you can add shadows, fill light, and highlights. I added shadow, to make the picture (and outline) darker.











Then I put the paper against the laptop screen and traced the outline. :-)












Cutting out the outline was not a problem. Could you believe though, that i could only find yellow paper? Oh how funny.






That meant I had to spray paint it black. I tried a permanent marker first, and it did not work very well. But the spray paint made it look like shiny paper.
















I mounted them in the frames on the back of the picture that already came in the frame. Yeah, I'm cheap like that. But, I also wanted to do it like this before deciding to cut any lovely vintage fabric.






But once I put them up, I could not decide it they were too plain or not. Any votes?






And yes, that is a cricket bat next to my husband's side of the bed. I always feel protected. :-)







Comments

Heidi said…
cute - and I can totally see how your hair was that day ;-)

I think they are a bit small for above the bed - just because the headboard is large/heavy.

I'd say bigger pictures, bigger frames or put them on a side wall/over your chest of drawers? Could be cool stacked instead of facing each other too.
the third said…
Crazy, that is how my hair was that day. :-)

I was thinking they look small too, but i was also considering "clustering" other pictures around it. (since I now have two holes in the wall!)
Parson's Wife said…
You could put photos of each of you and together photos. Cute and a lot of work.
Anonymous said…
Only two holes in the wall. Really?!?! I'm not sure if I should be impressed or disappointed. :o)

Popular posts from this blog

Adding Machine Cake

What type of cake do you give a graduating accountant? Why an adding machine/printing calculator cake of course! A friend of mine text me asking me to make one for her husband's graduation party and I accepted the challenge! I was very nervous, as this was my first sculpted cake! The night before I started working on the cake I cut the keys out of fondant. Because I wanted to make it to scale, I used a photo of an actually printing calculator. And then used the algebra my momma taught me! :) The width of almost all of my keys is 5/8 of an inch. I then cut a 2" wide strip of gum paste approximately 6" long and laid it over a quart jar overnight to dry. The next day I started by making 2 9"x13" cakes and placing one on top of the other and shaping the top one (actually only using about 1/3 of it) to make the top of the calculator! I apologize I have no photos, this was a pre-blog cake. Then came butter cream in between the layers and covering the cake! I rolled o

Labor of Love (Part 1 of 3)

I love lace. I love the delicacy with which it presents itself to the world. That being said, I dont really use it very much. I do have some family doilies, and my wedding dress has some lace, but I dont go too crazy. I like to be able to clean things, and not have dust mites clinging to every available piece of cloth (they cling to everything else anyway.) So, I decided to try a painting technique. Why not paint the lace on the object? Easy to clean, lovely design, what could be better? We got this child's vanity in an old attic pick. Yes, we went into someone's hot and muggy attic for several hours. Yes, they let us jsut dig through things (can you believe it?!?!) unsupervised. Yes, we had to take our own flashlights. And yes, there was mouse droppings and dead birds up there. It was gross, but worth it. My boy LOVED it! American Pickers is his favorite tv show. So this school bus yellow vanity sat there looking at us. Begging for new life! I knew if we left

Blind Man Stood on the Road and he

First, I need to say that every time I think of this song, I think of one man: Don Strunk. He shaped my middle school years and beyond by singing this song....alot :-) On my way to work yesterday I passed by the subway stop. Usually there is a man with a mohawk at this corner passing out free newspapers. I realized as I was crossing the street that it was a different man (also signaling that it was a different free paper). I also noticed the man had a cane, a cane like blind people normally walk with. As I got onto the sidewalk I was going to continue down the avenue (as opposed to into the train like most people would be doing) and the man asked me if I'd like a newspaper. I was pretty amazed that he heard me walking by in tennis shoes while big trucks zoomed past us. I'm lucky if I can hear the conversation that's meant for me to hear it in these situations.