Here's how you can make your own:
First, get a piece of wood...approximately 12"x12"
Sand it to get any rough portions off.
Paint it with a few coats until the color is uniform. (This is the green portion of our boards.)
While this dries make your silhouettes...there are two routes to go.
Option 1 is to actually trace their silhouette. You'll need a piece of freezer paper or other heavier paper that won't allow the paint to bleed through. Tape it on a wall at the child's level. Use a lamp to cast a shadow. Trace the child with pencil. this requires the child to be VERY still or your ability to hold the child's head still while still manuevering the pencil.
Option 2 is to take a photo of the child's silhouette...print it on a full sheet of paper...depending on your board size you may want to enlarge the picture to get the silhouette to fill the entire board.
Once you have your silhouettes cut the shape out in a continuous cut.
When your board is dry tape your silhouette to the board. I used double stick tape on the backside.
Next use your chalkboard paint to paint the silhouette shape. We used a brush...however, unless your paper is such that bleeding won't occur AND you're very good at making sure there are no lines in your paint when it dries I would suggest a small foam roller with minimal paint on it. this will help eliminate the lines as the paint will go on more uniformally; also diminishing the probability of bleed through for the paint. It took us three coats of chalkboard paint to have adequate coverage.
Once it was dry we peeled off the paper and the tape. We were met with bleed through...so we touched up the green portions to get a nice crisp silhouette again.
To finish it off we put two eyelet screws in the top.
Added ribbon for hanging.
A great day brightener for anyone!
2 comments:
You know what's really neat? Aaron and I both had our wood ones that Mr. Thorson made for us in 6th grade.... So I traced them on black paper and used them in one of the girls' scrapbooks on their ultra sound pages. So all 3 of us had our profiles on the page.... Pretty cool though - that Aaron and I both had our silhouettes from 6th grade!
THAT is cool...when I was tracing her I could remember being in the coat area and getting traced by him...what a cool project that was. I'm sure my Mom has mine somewhere...so fun that you both have yours. Can you imagine how much time he spent tracing those onto wood and then cutting out all of those?! Year after year after year? THAT is a caring teacher!
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