Mother's Day Present to Myself

I love my kids' profiles. I love to stare at the way their foreheads slope out and then indent above their incredible little snub noses. I love Moses and Clementine's curls. I love Grace's graceful neck and Judah's little chin. I love the chubby, slurpy cheeks the three younger ones have. I think their little faces are just adorable. Sometimes they get weirded out because of how much I stare at them.


I've wanted to have their silhouettes done for a long time now, and I finally decided to do it for Mother's Day. I read this post from A Holy Experience and loved the silhouettes she had of her children! She even helpfully included a DIY link at the end of her post. How nice!

So I went over here to see how hard it would be to make my own silhouettes. Not hard. All you need is some pictures of your kids, an exacto knife and/or nail scissors, some cardstock and double-sided tape. Yay!

I followed her advise and took their pictures in front of the french door, then I messed with the contrast and sharpness on iPhoto in order to get nice sharp features. If I do this again I'll print out 5x7 or maybe 8x10 photos instead of 4x6.  Some of the small details were hard to cut out.

Here's the pictures I used for my silhouettes. Clementine's was the hardest to get.

Cut through picture and cardstock.

Here's Sissy! I messed up on her back, but that's okay.

Here they all are. My index finger was killing me at the end because I had to press the knife in so hard to cut through the cardstock. But I like how they turned out!

 Then I wanted to mount them on some pretty paper. It was hard to decide. I have lots of pretty paper.

I decided on a different paper for the boys and the girls. I like it!

 Sorry about the glare in these pictures. How do you take a picture of something under glass and not get glare? Beats me.

Clementine, 18 months

Judah, 3 years

Moses, (almost) 5 years

Grace, 12 years

My Children!

 I really do like how they turned out. I did get double prints of the original profile pictures (in case I messed up!) so I could do another set if I wanted to. I'd actually like to frame them in 5x7 frames so they aren't so cramped, but this is the only frame I had on hand. And it really needs to be painted another color. Yuk. But other than that, I love looking at these adorable little faces!! They change so fast... I'm glad to have captured the sweetness of Right Now.