Silhouettes from photos...

(this is a repost of a blog I wrote last year on another blog)
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Night before last I was given a new challenge....to create a silhouette from a photo of a couple hugging.  I won't say who challenged me because its for a gift and you just never know who might read this stuff!    My reply was "Sure I can!"    With that ever present " I can do ALL THINGS through Christ..." attitude.  HA!

Of course, being the age I am (50+) my first thought was to use Corel Paint, black out the important parts, erase everything else, print out onto black paper and cut the printed part out.... with tiny scissors.  That is, after all, how you do it right?!  So, that's what I do... I print black on black, perfect!, easy enough to see and cut.  No, I didn't cut it, I was going to let her do that. :-)

She had told me that there were lots of shops on Etsy that sold them so I went there to check it out.   They are using vinyl!!!  DER!!!   OK, feeling really stupid now. Do I have a vinyl cutter right in front of my face?!  YES!  So, I did what I do to cut vinyl and TA DA! ... Silhouettes from photos...


 Be watching for my new shop in your Etsy neighborhood! :-)


Steps...

1. Copy/Paste a picture from a facebook album
2. Crop to the head or, use the whole body like I did for the couple
3. Change to b/w and putz with that until you are happy
4. Cut out using a vinyl cutter!

You can do all that or I will... check out my etsy ... it is one of my items for sale.

Sorry, I can't figure out how to turn the flash off! BAD GLARE!!!  And it's all bent up because I was trying to "weed" it on the machine...not easy!

Lessons learned:

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  A PERFECT profile picture is best, otherwise the hair becomes part of the nose, making it look HUGE.
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  The more dpi the better.  This one was 72 dpi so it was very pixelly, I had to convert it to 300 and mess with it UGH!
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  The Lighting is important ... too dark is hard.
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  Need a good contrasting background
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  The best picture would probably be one made just for the silhouette, not for the picture...no extra "stuff"

Now OFF!  I have to do SOMETHING to make some $$$!

PS.  Thanks for the challenge! ;-)

One of the things I made from the .jpg file I created: 

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