Children's Silhouettes

  I am seeing silhouettes all over.  I wanted to get on the silhouette band wagon!  I had taken down several shelves with family photos in my front entry.  I needed something to fill that area.  I came across a wonderful tutorial by Emily's at Jones Design Company found here, but I couldn't get a real clear image when I printed it off.

As I have mentioned earlier I wanted to do my oldest daughter's silhouette over.  She wears a lot of pony tails and I wanted hers to have that look.  This is what it liked like before.  She is the one on the left.

 So instead of using the computer this is what I did. 

I took a profile picture of my daughter and printed it out.  Something to keep in mind when hanging mulitple silhouettes together is that you want them all to be roughly the same size.  Yes, they all don't have the same sized head, but I didn't want my oldest to be way huge and the youngest to have a puny head.  So I played around with printing my images in different sizes.

I used black cardstock and a sheet of carbon paper found in any office supple store.

I first traced around my image before I started tracing in onto the cardstock.  I did this because I wanted to have a clear line for me to trace from.  I embelleshed her hair and drew in an eyelash. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that I wanted all my silhouettes to be facing a certain way.  So I traced the image onto the cardstock on the back side.  I didn't want to see any pencils marks from the front.

I put the carbon paper between my image and the cardstock and started tracing.

Then I cut it out.  I did have to get out my small sharp scissors to get into the small sections of her hair and to cut out the eyelash.

I taped it directly onto the scarpbook paper and taped the paper underneath my oval picture mat.

There she is!  She looks so more grown up in this silhouette than in the first!  Having her hair pulled up and her neck exposed makes her look more mature.



 While I was in the moment of doing silhouettes, I did my middle child over as well.  Her hair needed some embelleshment and she needed an eyelash.

And how could I forget my little guy!

I love my silhouettes!  My handy husband teases me that I move pictures around too much.  Well these are here to stay!  I might even redo them as they get older.

Silhouettes have been around for ever! 

 I can remember as a child and sleeping over at Grandma's house, there were 2 pictures of silhouettes hanging on the wall.  I was quite scared of them when trying to fall asleep.  My sister and I slept with the hall light on and our door cracked a bit.  I could see the silhouettes haning on the wall with the little amount of light coming in.  They were shadows of people hanging on the wall that scared me so much that I couldn't move in my bed!  I felt like they were looking at me!

And now I have silhouettes hanging on my walls.  Hopefully my children are not frightened of them!

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Bye for now!

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It's going on 4 weeks!

  I wanted to give you all a quick update on my wonderful sign that my handy husband made for me almost 4 weeks ago.  Every Saturday that passes he reminds me that I haven't done much with it.  I tell you...I'm in thinking mode.

But in my procrastination thinking mode.....

I've been demoted in the garage!

There's my project waaaaaay over there on the freezer.

My handy husband's got something new to work on.  Maybe his mind will drift away from my lack of work on my piece.

Here it is outside.  I painted it then sanded it.  Then I didn't like how much sanding I did so I painted it over.  I sanded it slightly some more.  I sanded it more on the horitzontal pieces to accentuate the lines.

Seeing it here I will probably sand it some more, especially on the ends.  

This is old wood!  The wood has some great raised grains that looks authentic when sanded.

I love the bottom piece of wood! 

There it is!  I have worked on it but it's been slow....I admit.  I'm keeping this and I want it to be something that I will enjoy looking at for years to come.

To be continued....

Chalk paint giveaway at Perfectly Imperfect

  I have been wanting to try chalk paint for awhile now.  I absolutely can't stand sanding.  It is just not my cup of tea!  Chalk paint can be applied right over glossy finishes.  No sanding required! 

So I have entered myself in a giveaway of chalk paint put on by Perfectly Imperfect.  Check it out and enter for yourself!

Spring Gallery Wall

Well...this post was going to be on how I made my silhouette pictures, but it has turned a new direction.  I want to makeover my oldest daughter's silhouette with her hair pulled up, but I haven't gotten around to doing so.  It's super easy - no photo editing program involved.  Unless you have one - which would make the process easier.  I simply took a profile picture of my children and then traced around their outline onto black card stock and then cut it out.  I taped the silhouette onto scrapbook paper and taped it under a picture mat.  When I make her silhouette over I will show the process. 

My title gives away the subject of this post.  I am going to show how I have laid out pictures on my gallery wall. 

I can remember looking at the pages of Pottery Barn while thinking to myself, "What crazy person changes the pictures hanging on their walls according the to seasons?"  I can now say....I am one of those people.

This is what it looked like back in October 2010.  No shelves and no coordinating of pictures.  Just pictures grouped nicely on the wall.

I tend to be more of a symmetrical girl.  This arrangement is not symmetrical but it is all balanced out.  You can see in this picture that photos are hung at the same height on the wall.

Here is what it looks like today.

It is very unsymmetrical! 

My poor handy husband repaired a lot of holes of me moving pictures here and there.

All of these frames with mats and 2 different sizes of shelves came in a kit, actually there are several kits pictured here.  I can't remember where I got them originally maybe Bed Bath & Beyond? 

I started with pictures of last year's Easter of my kiddos, except for the one shown of them sitting on the couch. 

I didn't want the wall to be so picturey.  I wanted to add other elements in it.

I started with my bunny.

I iron transferred the bunny on burlap and then stapled in onto a square piece of wood.  This is quite a close-up and I'm noticing the fabric is not so straight.  It's propped up against a family photo.

I printed the same bunny off from my printer onto the same scrapbook paper as the silhouettes.

I like the consistency of the images.  Before, I would have found different pictures of bunnies.  But why?  I like the image why not use it in another way.  I have used the nest picture and the bunny picture in other areas of my home.

The picture of the nest and the definition of nest are printed off onto a linen textured card stock paper.

And there it is!  I love how it's casual; pictures propped up and the different textures of fabric and moss and the decorative eggs.  I'm happy with it!

I've already started thinking about what I will do for Summer.

One more thing......this chair!

If you don't recognize the chair it's from Pottery Barn.  First time I saw it, I fell in love.  I fell in love with the basket weave!  I just had to have it.  And so when money was given to us, I made the trip to the PB store 50 miles away, purchased it, put it into our Suburban and drove home. 

This chair is detested by my handy husband with a passion!  Not only does he dislike the look but the comfort is somewhat undesirable.  He also dislikes how it came to live inside our home.  I used some, or I should confess, all our 5th wedding anniversary gift money to buy it without fully consenting him.  He knew I was going to be buying a chair.  What he didn't know that it was THIS chair and the actual price.

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My new found love of moss!

 Moss, Moss, Moss!  It's my new love!  Maybe it's the color or maybe it's the texture.  Whatever it is, you can't mess up with moss.  Moss is definitely messy...so probably I should say you can't go wrong with moss.  I've mossed quite a few things in my house.  I mossed the same Dollar store balls found in this post.  And I have several "G"s in my house that have been mossed.

I feel moss blends itself so well with Easter decor and color.

When I was deciding on what to display in my kitchen on a small wall space, naturally I turned to moss.

The polish pottery hard-boiled egg holders needed to go. 

I've seen the word "EAT" in many pictures of kitchens on design blogs and magazines.  I wanted to do something similar. 

So this is what you need and this is what I did.

I printed off the word "eat" in a basic font from my computer- I think I used Ariel. 

I cut out the letters and started tracing them on to a cardboard with carbon tracing paper, which you can find in any office supply store. 

I started to cut the letters out but cutting cardboard is difficult with scissors in some areas.  I needed to get my xacto blade and cutting mat out to finish them.

There they are!  The best thing is that your cutting doesn't need to be perfect.  The moss will cover all the areas that you may have not cut straight.

Then I put on hot glue and pressed the moss into it.

For the edges I simply just added more hot glue to the edge and wrapped the moss around it.  Some areas I needed to add more to the edge to cover.

One thing I have seen around blogland is that some people leave their freshly glued moss in a more of a "loose" look.  I wanted mine to be nice and neat.  So I trimmed them up quite a bit.  You can see this in the close-up picture at the bottom.

In the above pictures the "T" was looking a little more green the other two letters.  I just hot glued more moss on top of what was already there.  That fixed it.

Also I would add one clean-up tip.  Cover your work area with something!  I cut a plastic bag and spread it out onto my counter top.  When I finished I carefully folded up the bag and threw it in the trash.  The first time I didn't do this and it was one big mess!

I took down my egg holders and put them in place.  Love it!  It's a small wall space and they fit perfectly. 

My hubby said he didn't know if he liked moss and his food together.  I agree, but this is not near our food preparations and it's going to stay for awhile. 

I really like my mossy "eat"!

Have you mossed anything lately?

Thanks for stopping by.

Bye for now!

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