Once you have your silhouettes you can use them to make cool graphics or create awesome art for your house, holiday cards, thank you notes, mugs, mouse pads…anything!

I had a little fun with this and created Sibling Rivalry using profiles of my 5 year old Sophia and my 3 year old Miles.  The sky is the limit!

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You will need one of these two programs plus a photo that you want to turn into a silhouette.  I will be using profile shots against a high contrast background for ease.  You can get awesome action shot silhouettes though!  When you are working on a profile it is really helpful for hair to be off the neck so that you can get the line of the skull to the neck right.

Step 1:  Open your photo in Photoshop / Photoshop Elements.  You will see your main image as well as the Layers Palette to the right.  When you first open your image it is locked.

Step 2: Go to the Layers Palette and right click on your exiting layer.  Choose Layer from Background.  You can name it anything.  Hit okay and your photo layer should be unlocked so you can play with it.

Step 3: Select the part of the image you want as a silhouette.  You are going to use the Lasso tool for this.  When you locate the lasso tool in the menu to the left of your image right click to see your options.  I have used both the magnetic and the polygonal.  Play around and see which one suits you and your image.  The magnetic lasso will automatically find points around your image and wrap around them.  It is faster but it sometimes misses the portion of your image you want to select.  The polygonal lasso requires that you click all the way around your image at each point you want the line to move.   It is more precise and does allow you to more easily go around hair or accessories.

Once you have your selection and the beginning and end points of the lasso meet (this can be a little frustrating) you will see dancing lines around your selection.  Notice I did not have a perfect picture and chose not to include all that random hair.  Also, I can fix any irregularities later with the paintbrush.  What I really want is a good outline of the face and neck.

Step 4:  You want to remove the existing background.  Click on Select from the top menu and then Inverse.  This will create a dancing line around your entire photo.

Hit Delete and your background will disappear and your selection will remain.

Step 5:  Now you have your outline and you need to create the silhouette.  There are a couple of ways to do this but the easiest one I have found is to create a new layer.  You can go to the Layer Menu on the top and select New.  With the new layer selected use your paint bucket tool and fill in that layer.  I chose black (#000000) for my silhouette.  Do not freak out when the entire image turns black!  Oh no!  All you need to do is tell Photoshop to apply that paint bucket only to your “clipped” area.  Simply select the Move Tool (the little arrow and compass in the top left of your left side menu) and then hit CTRL+G.  This is the shortcut to create a clipping mask in Photoshop.  Then hit CTRL+E to merge your layers, use the paintbrush to fix and problems (or in my case finish the ponytail) and you have your digital silhouette!

Step 6:  Save your file! Please remember that if you are going to use this silhouette on a background (like on a website or for digital scrap booking) you want to make sure to save the file as a .png to preserve the transparency.  When you are ready to print and have a background you can save as a .jpg for use online or for projects.

Not only could you use these digitally but your could print them out, cut them out of black paper and use as beautiful art in your home.  They are oh so vintage and yet modern with the black.  I will attempt to figure out how to cut these using my cricut too.

Happy Silhouetting!  Please shoot me any questions in the comments and good luck!

I am linking up to…

I thought there must be a way, without being a photoshop genius, to give my pictures this awesome vintage look.  It took a lot of digging but I found a great little FREE program to download and a few very easy steps to make any photo hip in any way you want!

Start by downloading Photoscape.  It’s a free photo editor that lets you do tons of things to your pictures!  I have just started playing with it but it is easy and fun!  I will be spending a ton of time with this little gem!

First, select your run of the mill photo.  I love this picture of Sophia on the beach and thought it would look great with a vintage twist!

Next, upload your photo into the Photoscape editor.

Below the photo you will see a bunch of buttons that allow you to change anything about the photo.

For this picture I took the following steps:

Filter – Film Effect – Cross Process High.  Cross Processing in the real world of photography is the procedure of deliberately processing photographic film in a chemical solution intended for a different type of film (from Wikipedia).

Filter – Film Effect – Portra High.  Portra is an effect that is meant to simulate the high quality Kodak film that is used for weddings and portraits to give great skin tones and a very fine grain.  I just liked how it looked!

Bright, Color – Colorize.  For this picture I chose a color value 20, saturation of 255 and saturation level of 41%.  The higher the level, the stronger the color.  This is where you will give your pictures a different tone of green or orange or whatever suits your fancy!

Filter – Vignetting.  Click on Vignetting and choose your shadow like edges.  There are a bunch to choose from and they are fun to play around with!

Backlight.  (+/- 100%)  This is what I chose.  It gives a really cool light to the photo.  Play around with this too.  You can see the changes as you make them so it is super easy to change your mind.

Finally, the real Hipstamtic cool factor comes from the frame.  This was what I could never find but in Photoscape there are a few that mimic that cool old look. I chose Cali 12 for this photo, which has a rough edge around the entire photo. 

I ended up with the fabulous and very hip photo of Sophia at the beach!

I went ahead and hipped up a photo of Miles and Violet as well because it is just so much fun! Here is the original adorable picture of my two cuddle bugs!

I chose a Portra Low setting here with colorization of 25/128/50% for the more orange tones and I love it! I also chose the slightly more rugged Cali 5 frame.

Now don’t you have a couple pics that could use a little more hip?  Have fun and please share your experience in the comments so that we can all create some very cool photos!

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Vintage Dominoes

I love vintage games and have been scouring flea markets and online auctions to no avail. I just never find what I want or what I want is way too expensive for this particular desire.  I have seen games c. 1900 and earlier for thousands of dollars!  I am thinking more like $10-$20 each.  Here I will teach you to make them for even less!

You see, I want to have a number of these games for a completely EMPTY wall in our playroom and I love the colors of folk art and vintage games fall right in there!  Also, I would like to be able to take them off the wall easily to play the games. You know I am always practical! So a real vintage game does not really fit my purpose.  I don’t think I would let my toddlers play around with an antique, you know?

As usual, I decided to create all these games myself.

So far I am planning on creating, from easiest to most difficult – Checkers (Easy!),  Chinese Checkers (difficulty depends on pattern chosen), Parcheesi (difficult) and Backgammon (moderate).  I am sure I will add more if I see some really cool ones but this is a good start!

I am going to have a series on creating these games, which I think would be great for a play room, family room, kids room or rec room. If you want to make sure you get all the DIY tutorials as I create these games  and tons of other projects please consider following through Google Friend Connect or subscribe via RSS or by email to get all the latest DIY tips and tutorials from this handy Mom!  As usual I am always here if you have questions or do not understand a certain step.  I will do my best to help you finish your own DIY masterpiece!

I had been plotting my vintage game room for quite some time when I stumbled across the girls from Shanty2Chic and their Large Vintage Dominoes tutorial.  What a great place to start!  While I am not ever going to play with the large game pieces, I thought they would be great to break up the actual size games I would create and add some drama!  Check out their site – they have TONS of great vintage projects including some large vintage dice I am going to make in red!  The Shanty2Chic girls have a great tutorial on their site for both projects but I wanted to add a few details for those of you who, like me, are new to this kind of DIY.

TUTORIAL FOLLOWS:

Materials:

1 – 2 x 10 x 8 piece of untreated lumber from any home improvement store.  This will make 6 dominoes. and cost about $5.  Sometimes they will have scrap wood that you can get for less.  If so – go for it!  You only need 48″ to make 3 dominoes.

Sandpaper in 80 grit and 120 grit

Cream Paint in Satin Finish – I used Behr Cozy Cottage (740C-2) but any creamy color will work.

Black Paint in a Satin Finish

Ralph Lauren Glaze (RL 2420) tinted to smoke color.   I actually did not have them tint the whole gallon as it can be tinted at home with different colors depending on your needs.

Tools I Used:

You don’t really need any fancy told for this.  I just happen to have some so I used them.  Making the dots is the hardest part but you can be as casual as you want.  I am just completely anal and had to whip out my stencils, compass and tracing paper!

Miter or Circular or Hand Saw or Home Depot Guy:  To cut your pieces.

Power Sander:  makes it much easier to shape raw wood

Sanding block:   makes it MUCH easier

Paint Brush:  I literally used a tiny package from Walmart for the detail work and a very old Purdy for the cream.

Painters Tape

Tape Measure and / or Ruler

Sharpie (I live and die by Sharpie on projects) Not necessary, just wonderful!

Circle Stencil and / or Simple Compass:  I used both.  The circle stencil was from a super cheap package of shapes at Walmart.

Tracing Paper

Step One: Cut your wood into 16″ lengths.  I used my miter saw but you can use a circular saw, a handsaw or the handsome gents at the cutting stations in any major home improvement store.  Usually the first 2 cuts are free and after that are 25¢ each.

Cut Wood into 16" Lengths

Step Two: Use your power sander or get a real workout with your arms and a sanding block to round out each and every edge to look like a vintage domino.  Sand the entire piece so that it is relatively smooth.  This is raw wood so you are not going for perfection here!

Rounded Corners Close-Up

Step Three: Apply 2 coats of your cream paint.

Step Four: Plan and Layout your dots and center line.  I used a pencil and ruler on 1 domino to make a template.  After much experimentation I chose 3/4″ thick for my center line and app. 1 5/8″ diameter for my circle.   I had a circle stencil in various sizes and this is the one I chose.  I think that 1 1/2 inches would work too.  I apologize for the light on this picture but essentially I drew on my center lines horizontally and then made a vertical line down the center of the domino.  I then made a horizontal line splitting the top area in half.  This gave me the location for the center of my starting circle.  Dominoes are not equidistant from all sides as I thought.  Creating a full 9 dot domino allowed me to see the spacing that I wanted.   You an experiment but my circles are app. 3/4″ from the sides and 5/8″ from the top and from the center line.  There is app. 5/8″ between my dots vertically.  You can use a compass or stencil once you create all of your lines to make your circles.

Domino With Lines

Step 5:  Crate Your Template / Stencil:  Steps 4 and 5 you could have done much more free hand but I am not that good.  I also do not have a way to create a large stencil and I knew I wanted to use a template so I made one out of tracing paper.  I copied all 9 dots and my center line onto my tracing paper and marked top and bottom on it.

Tracing Paper Stencil

Step 6: Layout center lines on all pieces.  This is simple using your ruler.  Use your template and a compass or stencil to draw all of your circles in pencil.  If using the template make sure to follow your top and bottom notes and “flip” the template to do the bottom of the domino.  Simply use the template and compass to draw as many circles in the correct place as you need on that domino.  Apply painters tape around the lines.

Center Line Tape

Step 7: Paint in your lines.  Using a small brush I dry brushed 3 coats of black paint.

Step 8: Outline your circles.  I had one circle stencil and was just going to paint by placing it over my pencil lines but I did NOT like how it was making the dots look.  I kept having leakage.  I decided to use my one circle stencil and my handy dandy Sharpie and make all of my circles using the stencil over my pencil circles and then paint them.

Line and Dots Outline

Step 9: Paint Your Circles.  Using black paint and a tiny brush paint your circles.  This was fast and so much fun!  It was not at all difficult to stay in my Sharpie lines and I love the not absolutely perfect look of my circles!  It took 5 very light coats to get this right but each can be applied right after the last.  I show both 2 coats and the final so you can see!  Do not worry about brush strokes by coat 5 they are gone!

Two Coats

Final - 5 Coats

Step 10: Sand all edges, particularly corners, using 80 grit sandpaper and apply Minwax Red Mahogany (225) over the sanded areas.  This gives that vintage feel!  The Minwax stain will seep into the bare wood immediately so use a small brush and wipe off directly after application because it will stain your domino as well!  I learned this the hard way and have a little boo boo on my first corner.  Good thing these are vintage looking!

Sanded Edge

Minwax for Vintage

Step 11: Apply Ralph Lauren Tinted Glaze in Smoke.  You have to ask for a tint at my home depot and I did not want to tint an entire gallon of this stuff ($24.00) all one color since I can use it for so many projects!  I used a little tiny bit of my black to tint a little tiny cup of this stuff.  I might go back and use more but I am happy with the very light tint it gave at the moment.  You can get your glaze as dark as you like but be careful and test some first!  You just paint on and wipe off!  Love the simplicity there!  It gives a nice finish to the pieces no matter how light you go.

Ralph Lauren Glaze

Very Light Glaze

Step 11: Attach simple saw tooth hangers and hang!  I am not sure which way I am going to hang these yet so I am waiting on my hangers.  Right now they are filling part of an empty wall in my front room and get TONS of compliments!

Finished Dominoes

Please let me know if you try this project – I would LOVE to see your own Dominoes and any tips you might have for creating them!

I hope you liked this DIY Large Vintage Domino Tutorial.  Please come back for more!  I am linking this up to Kimba’s DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land!

Also, thanks to the girls at Shanty2Chic for the great tutorial and always inspiring blog!

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