Child's Painting Silhouette

I am SO excited to get back into crafting. I spend a lot of time doing things that are a total waste of time and then long for all my project ideas to be completed.  I know I'm not the only one out there who does this. Am I right? I've made a conscious decision to be better about it and it starts with this project.  Total time it takes: around an hour or two (including dry time).  Total time it took me: about a month.  BUT IT'S DONE. Completing this project has opened the door for me to make time to be creative and to finally start marking off all those projects from my list.

I got the kids involved in making this project extra special but if you don't have little ones at home, it would work with any cutout or painting you'd like. The possibilities are endless!

I love hoarding treasuring the precious artwork that my children create. But my kids LOVE to create so there is a lot. A lot, a lot. I needed a new way to keep their creations without just having more paper lying around.

Then one day I shared this photo that I found on pinterest (there was only a broken link attached to it. I don't know the original creator to give credit. If you do- let me know!) to my craft community facebook page Crafts & Coffee Support Group.  A member of the group commented that it could be made with paintings done by our children and I thought that was brilliant!

{unknown source}

Now I need to point out that my kids would never sit still long enough for me to actually trace their silhouette so I found an easy way to make my own template using photos of them!  That way, they don't have to sit still and I still get the actual shape of their head!

I also took this opportunity to update some boring decor that hangs in our house (stock photos of nature that my husband had when we got married) with something that means a little more.

[Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to products you can use for this project. Purchasing through these links pays me a small commision at no extra charge to you. Thank you for supporting my blog and for helping me to create future projects.]

Here's how to make it:

First, grab some Acrylic Paint and white cardstock paper. Let your kids get creative and paint whatever they want all over the paper.

While the paint is drying (or even while they are painting!) snap a photo of them facing sideways. It doesn't matter if the background is messy as long as it's a good side profile of them. I took these photos at different times spanning a few days:

Next, you need to size and print your photos so that they can be used as a template. I have a terrible printer and didn't want to waste ink on printing the background so I used Picmonkey to erase some of it away. If you have ink to spare you can skip this part ;)

...


[Using Picmonkey to clean up the background and waste less ink]

1- Open your photo by clicking "edit" on my main screen and uploading your image.

2- Next, go to "overlays" (the butterfly icon) and choose the rectangle shape.  Change the colors to white.

3- Make the white square large enough to cover your entire photo.

4- Using the "eraser" tab in the "overlay" box, start erasing away the white box where your child's face is.  If you erase too much, just click on the little paintbrush next to it and that will 'brush' the white back on. This doesn't need to be pretty or perfect, all we are doing is creating blank space for printing.

5- I suggest resizing at this point so that your entire 'saved' picture is the size you need.  To do this, go to the top icon on your lefthand bar (the 3 lines with the balls. Just a few above the butterfly icon you already pressed) and crop the photo to your desired size.

To figure out what size to make it, measure the inside of your frame. My frame was about 4.5 inches wide so I decided to make my photo a 4x6 to allow a little extra room on the sides.

***Pick back up here if you skipped the editing portion***

Now it's time to print your photos. Open a word document and insert your photos. Make sure to double check that the photos are the size you need them to be (especially important if you skipped the editing section)

Once everything is good to go, print your photos! If you have a terrible printer like I do, don't worry! The quality of the photo doesn't matter because it's only being used as a template.

Now you need to trace the outline of the heads/faces. Using a crayon, marker, pen, pencil, etc. trace along the outside and down the torso slightly.  I had to make a new line for my daughter's torso because it was twisted in the original photo and wouldn't show her chin outline as well if I'd kept it the same. You'll be able to get an idea of how it will look as your outline is drawn.

Cut out the heads. Be careful not to cut off any little noses or lips! The next couple of photos show the backside of my templates because it's easier for you all to see in pictures ;)

By this time your paintings should be dry. Place your templates on top of the paintings to make sure there is enough to fill in the silhouetted space.

Good to go? Great. Now trace along the outside of your template onto the painted picture. 

Carefully cut out the silhouette from the painted paper.  After that's finished, cut some solid colored cardstock (the blue and pink on mine) in whatever size your frame is. It's easiest to do this if you simply trace the backing or mat from your frame.

Using stick glue (that's an awesome deal on them if you go through a lot) or whatever choice of adhesive you desire, attach your painted silhouette to your solid colored cardstock.

If you wish to add details like name and age, do so with extra solid colored cardstock. You can also print directly onto the carstock before attaching the silhouettes (for me it was an afterthought so I had to add the pieces of paper at the end).

Finish it up by putting everything into your frame and hang!

I love how these turned out and love even more that my kids had such a big part in making them! It was total coincidence that my son's painting looks like his face/hair where the colors change and that makes it even more cool!

Thanks for following along. I hope you feel inspired to make your own.  Please join my craft community on Facebook to get inspiration and tips straight to your news feed and please share your projects with me there or on my Facebook page. I love to see how your creations turn out!

Top 5 Things to do with your Craft-reluctant child {Guest Post}

Today I have a very special treat for all you crafty mamas (papas, grandparents, aunts...) out there.  Sometimes kids are hard and planning daily activities with them is hard.  As a stay at home mama I frequently find myself wishing I had planned something more creative for us to do with our time.  I mean, I'm a craft blogger.  Where is the creativity?!  Or... maybe you are a Pinterest addict who frequently pins these amazing crafts online only to find that your child is less-than-impressed with your efforts.  We've had that happen here too.

Whether you are not sure how to go about introducing crafts to your child or burnt out on trying to get them involved in something they just aren't interested in, this guest post is just what you need to read.

About the guest blogger: Teresa is a nurse, lactation consultant, massage therapist, yoga teacher, writer and crafter.  Mother to three boys and one naughty Bichon.

The Back Story
I had an unplugged childhood. I spent hours, and I do mean HOURS, drawing, coloring, gluing, cutting, and creating. I grew up in a rural community. With the notable exception of the library and the city park and pool, there were few resources for leisure time, and <cough, ahem> the internet was decades from inception. Children’s programming was limited to Saturday mornings. There were a handful of regional children’s TV shows that were hosted by ersatz cowboys, music teachers, and homemade puppets.  A few of us that lived in town were fortunate enough to have cable television, but our cable was a fragile thing. Wind and storms routinely knocked out our reception and we were left to our own devices. In my case, I read, or searched my house in desperation for paper. I counted myself lucky if I found a blank piece of lined notebook paper. Some of my greatest creations were drawn on the back of envelopes.

It’s a New Day
Flash forward twenty or so years and I had children of my own—three boys to be exact. We lived in a decent-sized city with lots of resources for entertainment, a world class children’s museum, zoo, gardens, a professional puppet theater, bike trails, and numerous parks. We took advantage of all of these things and enjoyed them tremendously, but what I wanted to share with my boys was my love of all things crafty. My relationship with paper, crayons, and glue was not just the desperate time filler of my youth, it was the visual construction of my imaginings. For me, creating had a pleasant, satisfying, calming effect. I so wanted my boys to know what that felt like.


Crafing? Meh.
Because of my own lack of supplies, I was determined that my boys would have quality materials. I purchased beautiful German block crayons, reams of large newsprint for everyday and good quality drawing pads for the special projects. There were pastels, and water colors, an easel, and paint smock. I spent way too much on special scissors that cut patterns, die cutters in cool shapes, and colored construction paper in a rainbow of hues. In the event that they were more dimensional thinkers, I purchased old school clay, modeling dough, modeling wax, and colored, wax-covered sticks that were easy to mold and sculpt. There was much more, but I think you get the picture.
While I was savvy enough to know not to introduce all of these things at once, all of my attempts at encouraging creativity was met with, “Meh.” How could this be? How could my offspring prefer an online coloring game with limited palette and no shading? “Did you smell that beeswax?—It’s heavenly!” “Look at this beautiful stamp set with colored ink pads!”



Don’t You Walk Away Mister
I did exactly what I shouldn’t have done. I got angry. I tried bargaining—“Spend half an hour modeling dough with me and you can watch a movie.” Nothing worked. At best I would get five fidgety minutes of haphazard coloring and a “Can I go outside?” I felt rejected. I shouldn’t have taken it personally, but I did.

Professional Help
This situation could have gone on inevitably if not for some professional intervention. My boys’ beloved grandmother was a former art teacher and preschool teacher. With her guidance we made some changes. Some of these changes were structural, but honestly—the big change had to take place inside of my head.


Top 5 Things to do with your Craft-reluctant child:

1) Create a craft cabinet with all of your supplies centrally located and easily accessible. The contents of that cabinet will need to be modified with very young children. If this is an activity that you want your children to do then they have to be able to get to the supplies.

2) Some negotiation is OK. If your child is “bored” give them a choice of three things they can do. Make crafting one of those things. This way they are selecting crafting for themselves and you can hopscotch right over the power struggle. This of course means that you have to be OK when they don’t pick crafting.

3) My mother-in-law was fond of reminding me that when creating with young children, it’s the process and not the product that counts. Let go of the perfectly executed Pinterest project. Themed art projects are really more for us than for them. What matters most right now is the exploration.

4) When your child does express interest in a crafting activity pick a single medium and really explore all of the qualities of that medium. Have you ever thought about all the things you can do with crayons? You can melt broken crayons in muffin tins and create your own block crayons. You can grate them with an old cheese grater and melt shavings in between sheets of wax paper. You can create a drawing and then iron to watch the lines blur. The sensory play and experience with the medium is far more important than having a picture-perfect themed project. The exploration of cause and effect and the sensory play with medium was one of the most successful things that helped to engage my left-brained boys in a right-brained crafting activity.

5) Make your peace. I’m sorry to say this. It breaks my heart really it does, but this may not be your kiddo’s favorite activity any more than say, hockey is yours. You can continue to enjoy all those supplies. Pull out the paints, crayons and pastels. Invite your son or daughter to interact with you. Go ahead and role model what an enjoyable and stress-reducing activity crafting can be, but know it may not be their thing.

Perspective
Given the first paragraph of this blog you can probably guess that my boys are no longer little boys. Two are young adults and one is a teen. The two older boys have gone on to be successful college graduates, hard workers, and productive members of society. I like to think that all the exposure they had to creativity as a child played a role in helping them to develop their dimensional thinking, math skills, and reasoning skills that help them to be successful adults. While I’ve had to give up on my dreams of Christmas craft projects with my adult children, I was successful in creating three well rounded young men, and I’m proud of that. Project completed.

-Teresa

Enjoy this post?  Keep an eye out for the launch of Teresa's new blog: "Postpardum Mama" that will be launching after the start of the new year.  Her focus will be on product reviews, 15-minute one-handed meal prep recipes, weekly postpardum challenges for self-care and more!  Teresa was my very own lactation consultant when my son was born and her knowledge of postpardum topics has been a lifesaver for me time and time again.  I can't wait to see what her new blog has in store!

Wedding Activity Book for Kids!

Hello my friends!  I am very excited to share today's post with you.  One would think that I would have been most excited about wedding details such as the flowers, centerpieces (okay, I did love those) or my shoes.  Common, brides out there- you know what I mean.  The funny thing is- I was probably most excited about our "busy bags" that we made for the children attending the wedding.

We had a couple dozen children at the wedding who were young enough to need something fun to do during our reception.  In each bag we had a variety of goodies including an activity book which I will show you today:

{Front Cover Page}

 

 

The front is simple: our names, what it was, when it was and a picture.  Our entire wedding was based loosely on an "outdoor" or "grow" theme so of course, I added a tree here as well!  Lastly, a spot for the child to write their name was added.  This way they have their very own book and there is no mix up! Plus... it is always fun having your name on something.

Inside Pages

For this book, we decided to make six activity pages, printed back to back.  Here they are:

{Page 1 & 2} Maze and Drawing

For the maze I found this GREAT website that has mazes shaped in each letter of the alphabet!  Since it is a learning website, there were "S' characters (a snake and a snail) where my Mr. and Mrs. are.  To make it like mine, I just printed out the original, scanned it, then altered it in my Paint program. P.S. Our last name starts with an 'S' if anyone was still wondering!

As for the cake, I just hand drew it and scanned it into the computer.  I told the kids to design their own wedding cake however they wanted.  How fun is that?

{Page 3 & 4} Crossword Puzzle and Coloring/Writing

 

This crossword puzzle is awesome because I got to make up the clues and answers, but did not have to figure out how they all went together (win, win)!  Check out this website to make your own, it is easy and completely free!

The coloring page was copied from an image I found online.  I left the sign on the back blank so that the children could write their own message on the back of the car! 

Disclosure:  This is not my design, I merely traced and altered it.  (If anyone knows the source of this image, please let me know.  I would love to give credit where credit is due)

{Page 5 & 6} Secret Message and Word Search

Remember these "secret message" activities from when you were a kid?  I LOVED these and just had to put one in this book.  It is easy to make yourself.  Assign each letter of the alphabet a number:
A= 1
B= 2
Y= 25
Z= 26
You get it! Next, write out a message using the numbers as "clues".  Simple as that.

The word search was one of my favorite pages as well because it was so personalized!  This is another website that I cannot seem to find again (which really is a shame because it was such a good one).  However, a quick online search will lead you to a variety of options including this one.
Make it as personalized as you can!  I used words that were important to us, such as: family and God as well as our names and the names of our ceremony venue.  Doing this gives it a special touch that shows you did more than just print off a "wedding themed" puzzle.


{Back Cover Page}

 

Here I just left a blank area for the kids to draw whatever they felt like drawing!  In their bags were crayons, pens and ruler stencils that they could use to make designs.  I finished it with a "Thank You" for coming to the wedding.

How neat, right?

This activity book -along with the other goodies in their busy bags-  kept kids busy and helped them get past all those "boring parts" of the wedding!  Even if you don't want to make an entire goody bag, I would definitely consider making an activity book to hand out.  The activities range in skill and type and can be fun for both you to make and for them to enjoy!  I loved every minute of creating my activity book.

Disclosure:  I have received no compensation for the websites mentioned in this post.  I have suggested them only because I used them and/or think they will be helpful for you.

Sending my love,

Kelsie Ann

Link Love! This project is linked to: Every Day is an Occasion

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