Silhouettes, I’m loving them right now!

January 16, 2011 2 Comments

Yep, loving them.

There seems to be a resurgence of silhouette art these days! But that’s ok with me. A while back I saw an art piece in a magazine of all sorts of silhouettes and it inspired me to want to do a shadow box piece of a bunch of silhouettes from our trip to NY, the kiddos playing ball, my son staring out the train window, looking at dinosaurs… You get my point..

Well, that project hasn’t happened, so I can’t show you that! Were you thinking I was leading up to that?? 🙂 sorry. But not to be disappointed, I have a link love and a mini tutorial for ya today!

First, the link love….

1. I was lookin’ around and fell for the dog silhouette done by Living with Lindsay. I love the white accents around the dog’s ear. She has a tutorial for doing this using paper, what I think of as the traditional way….

2. I’m in love with Circles and Squares work. I got this print for my son’s new playroom we’re working on. I also got my husband an awesome shirt from these guys. And on a side note, I bought a kids sweatshirt from them 3 years ago or so and it’s held up to 2 toddlers for this whole time. Very impressed…

3. Another tutorial for silhouettes on fabric. Inhabitots shows you how to make one with a freezer stencil. I’ve never done a freezer paper stencil, but want to try. Very cool.

4. And another piece from Pumpkin and Butterfly! (I showed you her Fly to the Moon print a few weeks ago.) I realized I had bookmarked this print ages ago, before I was featured with her in the Etsy treasury. ANYWAY…. The bright colors of this one are awesome for a more modern appeal!

5. After our trip to the zoo today, this watercolor silhouette tutorial from Prudent Baby caught my eye! So many ways for silhouettes!

6. And last but not least, how adorable is the hippo and the toothbrush by Karl Johnson?? I should get this and hang it in my bathroom in hopes that it will help with the 2 year old’s nightly tooth brushing ritual!

And for Part 2 of my post today….

Mixed Media Fabric Silhouettes Tutorial

Materials

Camera

Computer (sorry it’s not in the picture, but I wasn’t going to move my whole computer over to the photography board!)

Paper

Fabric

Fusible Adhesive, like Steam to Seam or Heat’n Bond (Seems to be one of my favorite tools these days. For this project I used Heat’n Bond Lite for sewing)

Scissors

Iron

Thread

Sewing Machine

Step 1: Pick your picture. You can just print it and go from there. I wanted to have a real image before I got started, so I did a little Photoshop action. I’m not going to add the Photoshop part to the tutorial (but if you have questions, just ask).

Step 2: Print the image the right size for your project. You will be transferring it to the back side of your fabric and fusible adhesive, so be sure that you don’t need to mirror your image.

Step 3: Iron the fusible adhesive to the fabric. Here, I’m using the traditional black, but as you can see above the fabric can be anything!

Step 4: Trace your image onto the fusible adhesive. You either need to cut it out and trace it or hold it up to a light source and trace. I typically to option 2, but with the black I had to turn to option 1.