Littlebits by Emily Collette: Pet Silhouette

I made this project as a birthday gift for my mom. She had been curious about how to do a silhouette project, and I had been wanting to make one for quite some time. After a little research and experimenting, I came up with something that was a lot of fun to make. I used photos of my family dogs Pippin (who passed away a few years ago) and Cooper. The result went over very well for my mom’s birthday and now brightens up what was once an empty wall. This project is also a wonderful way to display love for your pet!

What You’ll Need:
• Images of pets
• White cardstock
• Newspaper
• Black acrylic paint
• Tacky glue
• Paintbrush

Directions:
1. Find, or take, a photo of your pet. It works best if the photo is a side profile shot.

2. In Photoshop, use the erase tool to remove the area around your pet. Be careful around the fur (the magic wand tool works well for this), but remove as much background as you can.

3. After removing the background, select the white surrounding the pet (the magic wand tool works easily here too.) After the white space is selected, go to “select > inverse.” This will select your pet. Finally, “delete” to reveal your silhouette (remember to make sure your default color is set to something other than white.)

4. Make any additional touch-ups. Now you can fill in the pet with black (or any color you want!) using the paint bucket. Then print out the pet on the white cardstock and cut out the pet.

* Alternatively, if you do not have Photoshop you can print out the image you are going to use to the size you want the silhouette to be. Then, carefully cut out the pet from the background. This will create a stencil that you can trace on to the white card stock.

5. If you printed the silhouette with a color, you could leave it this way, but I decided to create a painted look. To do this, I brushed two coats of paint directly over the card stock cutout and let it dry.

6. Once dry, you now can paste the pet silhouette on any background you desire! I used a brush to carefully spread the tacky glue all over the back of the pet. For my background I cut out horizontal and vertical newspaper strips to fit a 8”x10” frame. I also added an accent heart that I made from cardstock and acrylic paint.

Here are some photos of the final product: