Silhouette portraits

This year I am teaching art to two classes in our homeschool co-op. I have about thirty 3-4th and 5-6th graders. First semester we did a unit on silhouettes. At Christmas, I made traditional silhouettes of each child in my classes as gifts. There is a great tutorial at the Simple Gifts web site under gadboisfamily.com/simple_gifts/?p=658.

Originally I wanted to have the students do this project themselves, with the light on the wall method, but when I experimented at home, I realized that this method made such huge silhouettes that it would be hard for parents to frame or display them if they wanted to. It worked very well to take digital pictures of each child, download them into my photo program on the computer, and print them on regular paper. I sized them at 4 x 6 for ease of framing. After printing them on paper, I trimmed roughly around each picture, paper clipped the bust to black acid free paper card stock, and cut each one out. I had some embroidery/surgical scissors around that worked very well for details. They turned out well and were great fun to do.