Silhouettes Galore

| Jann Maser Artworks
Long before Cricut and Silhouette machines became popular, hand-cut silhouettes were a thing. Still hanging somewhere in my childhood home are 3 hand-cut profile silhouettes of my brothers and I as babies. I’ve always liked the silhouette, simple and understated. This week I got creative with the silhouette trying to bring it up to modern times and I got carried away while I was at it. Once I got started I kept coming up with other ideas to reinvent the silhouette. I had to pump the breaks or my X-acto knife and I would have been up all night. That being said, there will probably be a Silhouettes Galore Part Deux in the future.
 
Now for the silhouettes…..

My grandma was an amazing seamstress. I admired her attention to detail and the way she picked out the perfect color combinations for her quilts and clothing. I inherited most of her fabric and sewing supplies and they are by far some of my most treasured possessions. I decided for my first silhouette to use some of her fabric as the background. I used an

X-acto knife and hand cut silhouettes of my girls from pictures I had taken of them. Then I opened up the storage bin of my grandma’s fabrics and immediately recognized some of the fabric patterns from dresses she had made for my dolls and dresses she had made me. They still smelled exactly like her sewing room. So I sat in my closet and cried for a good twenty minutes….I miss her so much. She would have thought these were pretty cool, but would have criticized me for not putting any backing on the material, which I will do next time to make it more sturdy. These would look amazing with modern fabrics as well. 

 
 
Side note, all the frames from this post are from my favorite thrift store. And so are the materials I used for the next silhouette. If you get offended by ripping pages out of a book, look away now. Because that is what I did. I love those coffee table books with full page picture spreads and bonus if they were printed anytime before 1990. I hit the jackpot the other day and got both a perennial flowers book and another titled: Exploring the Deep Frontier. I used pictures from those books as the background for the next 3 silhouettes.

 

For my final silhouette I used my X-acto knife to cut layers of different color blue paper and arranged them in a shadow box to give it a 3 dimensional effect. I use this same method in my paperslide projects. If you haven’t seen these you should check them out here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkFXQnAzKU7_Z43xiI_pGMxel6Rb2qOmV

So if you are ever in my house and see half a dozen silhouettes of my girls on the wall, I’m not crazy…well I am a little. Hope you enjoyed my decent into all things silhouette! I’m interested to know which one is your favorite, let me know!

Leave a comment