DIY Silhouette Wall Art

A couple of weeks ago, I posted pictures of my toy and sportsgear filled living room here.  The fantastic interior designer, Magnaverde, left a long and thoughtful response on how to embrace the detritus of daily life by going with bold colors that would help to camouflage the sea of Legos and lacrosse sticks.  He said that stepping away from my safe colors with fun pillows and vibrant artwork would draw the eye to the great decorative pieces, embracing the lacrosse sticks like polo mallets in a Ralph Lauren ad would make them belong.  I hadn't thought of it that way before, but ideas started swimming around with how I could make small changes to my living room to make "how I live" beautiful despite the toys and sports gear.

The bulk of the updating will happen after the holidays, because of both time and money, but I do have one project to share right now.  I was putting away the paint cans after painting Snuggle Bunny's room here, when I thought they would be the perfect colors for some DIY art.  The orange and green combination was so fresh and vibrant and fun just like in this photo of Kate Spade's popup shop in London.

So I ran over to Michael's Craft Store with a 50% off coupon and bought an enormous 3'x4' canvas

and immediately rolled on some green.  I didn't worry about rolling the edges, because Computer Genius will be making a frame for me on the handy dandy router table I gave him for his birthday last year.

I don't know why the green looks so pale in this pic, but I assure you it's the same bright pea pod green used in SB's room.

I then went to my computer and printed off some pictures of the family from our last camping trip.  I printed them in grayscale in draft mode so as not to waste ink.

I cut around each person

and traced them out on contact paper.

If I did this project again, I'd skip the contact paper step and just spray the cutouts with stencil adhesive, because the contact paper didn't stick as well as I'd hoped it would.  I needed to use bits of blue tape to hold my cutouts down.

I nibbled bits off of the bottom edge of a piece of blue tape with my scissors for the ground that we'd be walking on.  After taping all of our silhouettes on, I went to work with the orange paint.  I first stippled over the silhouettes so that I wouldn't get any paint under them, then pulled the brush away from the silhouettes in broad strokes.

I pulled away the tape and contact paper and voila!  DIY Silhouette Art for $20 total.

Computer Genius is out front blazing the way, Snuggle Bunny is in the middle, I'm following with the backpack of snacks and drinks, and Whirling Dervish is taking up the rear of the procession, climbing down a fallen tree.  He's my tree climber and my hiking straggler.  This enormous piece of artwork is already on the wall and is doing a great job of drawing the eye away from the random bits of childhood while still embracing those same children even without a frame.  Watch for a picture of this "in situ" when I do the updated living room reveal after the holidays.

Thanks for popping in and checking out my DIY project and check out all the other fun projects at Keeping it Simple's Motivate Me Mondays Between Naps on the Porch's Metamorphosis Monday, and Cottage Instincts's Make it 4 Monday.