Felt silhouette

Hurray, I've got another of my 'craft it forward' makes done! I've been wanting to try making a simple framed silhouette for ages and this seemed the perfect opportunity. Here's the finished picture:



It's impossible to see in this picture - I'm not doing well photographing things at the moment - but the background fabric is a very pretty pinkish print.


I used this tutorial



The secret is to take a side on photo of the person, and then trace the outline. In the tutorial this was done by printing the photo first, but I found it worked really well to trace it straight from my computer screen. I think the 'light' from the screen really helped with the tracing. And again in the tutorial the silhouette was then transferred on to black card, whereas I preferred to use black felt, it was the crafting type of felt that you can get with a peel off adhesive backing so it made life very easy. I had been planning on using thicker, upcycled wool felt, but my picture frame was quite small and I felt that the silhouette just wouldn't be crisp enough in thicker, slightly fluffier fabric in the small size I needed it to be.

In some ways I would have liked to do a bigger picture, I think it might have helped the silhouette to appear more distinctive. But, I really like silhouettes in oval frames, and the only oval frames I've come across have all been small. I'm collecting them at the moment to try and get enough to make silhouettes of all the family for us.

I think it's something that could make a lovely Christmas present for someone too - maybe for a Grandparent, a collection of silhouette pictures of all their grandchildren? What do you think?

Two more Craft it Forwards to go, and one is well on the way. And, even more exciting, the lovely friend who was making me a Craft it Forward gift took my last post on the subject as a subtle hint to get her act in gear and get my present organised, and so a couple of weeks ago I received my gorgeous gift (it really wasn't intended as a subtle hint, but I can live with it being taken that way!). It's now sitting up next to my bed looking very pretty. I'm hoping that the very kind person who made it for me might be going to provide me with some photos and text about it so I could post it on here for you all to see (now that is a subtle hint!), so watch this space!   

I'll be back again tomorrow, Sally.