diy silhouette art Archives - Sincerely, Sara D.

My most popular question lately from readers has been the source for the silhouettes hanging in our kitchen. Since they are a DIY, I thought it was time I shared how to make framed silhouette art. These portraits are not only easy to make, but they are really inexpensive too! It’s a win-win!

To make your own silhouette, you will need:

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Phone (or camera)
White paper
Black paper
Tape
Scissors
Frame (I found my frames at Walmart and spray painted them gold, BUT HERE are the same frames already gold).

The first step is to take a profile photo. These work best against a plain wall.

If you are using your phone camera, you can easily email the photo to yourself.

Save the photo from your email to your desktop.

Next, open Word. My frames were only 5×7, so I put my silhouette on one side of a (landscape) 8.5 x 11 sheet.

Now you will need to print out the photo. It does not require a fancy printer – I just used a black and white printer.

Make sure your silhouette will fit your frame correctly.

Cut around the silhouette photo and a black sheet of paper. Tape the corners.

Carefully cut around the portrait using a smaller and sharp set of scissors.

Make any adjustments needed. I often round the bottom of the portrait (you can see this in the video below).

Add tape (double stick is best) to the back of the silhouette.

Tape it on to your white piece of paper and place in frame. You now have your own silhouette portrait art! In this tutorial, I used black construction paper because it was all I had on hand. However, I would recommend using a higher quality black paper because construction paper does fade over time.

Watch this video to see How to Make Framed Silhouette Art:

Tag me on social media if you make your own silhouette art. I want to see your creations!

Go create something!

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Love making silhouettes? Check out this large silhouette tutorial and make your own for around $3!

Go here to see how!

This DIY Large Silhouette Art is a fun project to make and cost me only $3!

I love silhouettes. They are timeless, sentimental and make great artwork for the home. I created this silhouette for my daughter’s room (to see more on her room click HERE), and it only cost $3! To begin, a side profile photo is needed. Use a camera phone to take a profile photo and email it to yourself.

I tried the old-fashioned way of creating a silhouette with NO success. Between my daughter not standing still and my son moving the flashlight, I wasn’t able to trace the silhouette since it was constantly changing.

Once the photo is emailed to yourself, open it and print it. It doesn’t need to be a great copy, I just used our black and white printer. Since my silhouette was so large, I printed mine across four 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper.

This “tiling” process can be a little complicated. If you have Adobe Illustrator, create a document sized to however large you want your image (mine is sized to 17″ x 22″). The select print and a box will pop up. At the bottom in “options,” you should select “Tile” and your image will print out in different sections.

If you don’t have Adobe Illustrator, here’s a tutorial I found on Pitter & Glink for printing large images using Microsoft Word. If you don’t have either program and want something larger than 8.5 x 11 inches, just send your image to a local printer or office store. They can print it fairly inexpensively as a black and white image on whatever size you prefer. Once the image is printed, cut it out to create a silhouette. A piece of black (or another color) paper can be added behind to create a silhouette. Or, you can cut out the image and use it as a stencil as I did.