Capturing The Here and Now . . .

If you’re a mom like me, your life is whizzing by at an alarming rate and there are days where you just want to freeze your little people at the age, size and personality with all its quirkiness that they are right now.

So that’s what I did. In the form of silhouettes.  I’ve always loved traditional silhouettes.  I know they are trendy. Or were trendy. Whatever.  I just wanted to have a memory of Owlie’s little teeth, Big C.’s curly hair, Hannie B.’s long hair and RedDog’s front cowlick.

Here’s what I did {which is in no way professional or right – it’s just how I could figure to make it work for me}:

I took a picture of each of my children in front of a bright window.  I made sure to photograph each child at at the same angle and distance. Here is RedDog’s shot straight out of camera:

Next I went into Photoshop and with my very meager editing skills I brightened the background by brightening the light and removing the contrast entirely. Then I selectively outlined RedDog’s head and torso using the magic wand tool (or something like that) and put his silhouette at full contrast, removing all brightness and color.  The details ended up pretty good. Here’s the edited shot:

After printing this photo on regular white paper, I used very sharp, small scissors to cut RedDog’s silhouette out. Normally at this point a real crafter would have used that cut out as a template to cut a silhouette on black paper.  I’m too lame and impatient for that. Instead, I took the original cut out and colored over both sides of it using a huge black permanent marker. You know – the kind that smells so good it gives you a little headache.

I mounted the silhouette on cream cardstock and framed it in a frame I found at a garage sale.  The finished product looked like this:

And here are the other three kiddoes:

I really like how the silhouettes captured my kids personalities.

Have you done silhouettes of your kids? How are you capturing the memory of them right now?