Silhouettes & Shadow Boxes

 

My family art wall.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, my house needs ART on the walls. Slowly but surely I am making progress.

 

 I was inspired to create silhouettes of my boys for wall art after viewing this "house crashing" post on Young House Love's blog  click here for full blog post.  The hardest part to making these silhouettes was getting a good profile picture of my boys.  Getting a 1 and 2 year old to stand still long enough for a profile picture can be tricky.  My secret weapon was a lollipop that I held out in front of them to hold their gaze for that nanosecond  I needed them to be still for the picture.  After the profile pictures were taken, I put them in Photoshop Elements for a little line darkening.  I did this by darkening the contrast/exposure.  I then scaled the pictures to print out for an 8"x 10" frame. I cut out the boys' profiles from my photo print and then I traced this outline onto some heavy linen card stock that I found in a slate blue.  Some careful trimming with sharp scissors and voila silhouettes were done.  I used a light blue/grey/black checked paper for the background.  I found both the papers I used in the scrapbook aisle at Micheal's.

I took the blank angled wall in my entry hall and first filled it with a table that my husband made for our last house.  The table is made from walnut and sycamore.  My husband left the wood natural/unfinished to highlight the  beauty of the wood.  This table was beautiful in the narrow hall of our last house, but I had yet to find a good home for it in our current house.  After much playing around I thought it worked best on this angled wall, which made a perfect home for the silhouettes of the boys.

 

My other art project for this wall was a shadow box of keys.  I had been eyeing these "vintage" keys from Pottery Barn for several months and had pinned them to my "front door ideas" board on Pinterest click here for pinterest inspiration board.  In another inspiration from a Young House Love blog post, I arranged the keys to represent our "family" in the shadow box.  The large key on the left is Dad, Mom is next, then our two sons, and finally our dog (who has to be turned sideways since he doesn't walk upright). The vintage keys came as a set of seven, so I had a couple of spare keys to display flat on the table. The frames and shadow boxes were purchased on sale at Michaels.  I used "Gorilla" glue to adhere the keys to the back of the shadow box.   All in all I love the personal touches this art adds to this space.  Has anyone else done some family inspired art lately?