I remember sitting and having my silhouette cut out by hand as a little girl, and have always wanted to have them made for my kids. There are many sources where you can order them online, but then I realized how easily I could make them myself! They might sound intimidating, but I made these from start to finish in one afternoon on a whim.

Photoshop makes the process super easy. First, you will want to take side profile pictures of your kids (or dogs!). I recommend doing it against a light, solid colored wall if possible. They don’t need to be anything fancy – I just took these with my phone.

Then, open the image in Photoshop. Right click on the background layer in the layers panel to the right on your screen and click “Layer from Background” to unlock it.

Then, click the Polygonal Lasso tool. I like to start at the neckline on the left side and work clockwise. Click once to start the tool and make continual small clicks, following all the way around the shape of the face and head. It looks best to leave a section of neck and chest attached as well.

Once you get back to the beginning, a small circle will appear by the cursor when you are close enough to connect with your starting point. The line will change to a flashing dashed line once closed.

Right click anywhere and click “Select Inverse” – the flashing dashed line will appear around the rectangular part of your image. Then hit delete to erase the background.

Now, click on the Layer tab at the top of your screen. Click “Layer” and then “New Layer.” A box will pop up and you can just leave the name “Layer 1” and click OK. Then, right click anywhere on the screen again and click “Select Inverse” once more.

Click the paint bucket tool and make sure the color is set to black. Then, click anywhere on the face picture to turn it black.

There you have it! You can clean up the image now if you have any rough edges or points, make it more centered, or add text if you want to. If you want to remove the background altogether, you can save these as .png files. Otherwise, you can right click on one of your layers at the right and click “flatten image,” which will give you a white background again. Then save as a .jpg file, which can easily be printed from a variety of programs.

As far as sizing, it’s best to know what size of picture frame you’ll be using and how big you want the mat. You can then change the size of your silhouette before printing if you want.

Now, you can print these out onto regular paper (we have a laser printer and I don’t love the lines it makes), or you can go the extra mile and make these feel extra special. I printed mine out and then taped the paper to heavy, nice quality black cardstock. You can get this by the sheet at any craft store. I used the Canson “Mi Tientes” brand that is sold in the fine art paper aisle, usually with sketchbooks and large pads of paper.

Next, you can use either an exacto knife or tiny, sharp scissors to cut out the shape. The tape holds everything together pretty well, but you might have to be extra careful around tighter areas like the hair and face. I ended up using both, but felt I had the best control with my little Fiskars scissors.

So, if you don’t have Photoshop, you could probably just skip right to this last step – print out your photo, background and all, tape it to black paper and cut it out. I wanted a digital version of these as well as a physical copy, so I’m happy to have them both ways.

The last step is to mount the cut outs onto a background paper of your choice. I like plain white, but you can use anything. I cut out pieces of cardstock to the appropriate size and attached my cut outs with double sided adhesive squares meant for scrapbooking.

After that, I added a small handwritten line at the bottom including my daughters’ names and the year. There are so many possibilities for customization, I would love to see how yours turn out. Please hashtag me if you post! #katiekelbelinteriors