I was so inspired by a wall art project on mousehouse the other day that I couldn't wait to do something similar but personalised. After a week of mulling it over, a bird on fabric became... my kids on paper! I did it a bit different to other tutorials I have seen so here's my steps in case you want to do one too (and there's lots of other project ideas at Our Creative Spaces).
First you need some profile photos... I found bathtime was easiest for this! Because I was doing two, I wanted them similar sizes, so I just opened both pics in a Word document and played with the sizes until they were similar and fitted on an A4 page (if you are a Photoshop ninja you could of course go straight to drawing an outline but I did it old school).
I like working with stencils, so you can try again when you stuff up use them again - I keep food boxes to use for this as they are nice light cardboard, just paste your printed photos (from your A4 Word document) on to the cardboard and when the paste is dry carefully cut out the heads (I changed some details with ballpoint pen first, like giving them necks!)
Then decide which way you want them facing, I wanted the finished pictures to look to the right, so I used the stencils pointing to the left (the photo-pasted side is facing down). Trace around on black paper (I got some nice matte black paper from an art shop for 35c) in ballpoint, add a soft point below each neck, then cut out carefully with small sharp scissors.
Once you have cut out the shapes, turn them over and you can play around with colour, yay! I was going to use scrapbooking paper but found this pack of mixed A4 paper on sale (wrapping paper or wallpaper would be good too). I had planned to use bright colours but Miss 4 insisted on the gold.
Then you just need to attach the black piece of paper - paste might make wrinkles so doublesided tape or a glue-snail is easiest.
Because I did two pictures on an A4 to start with, each one now fits nicely on to an A4 backing, and A4 frames can be cheaper to buy than other sizes (sometimes they are called certificate or display frames).
Other wall art posts we have done...
