Artwork DIY aka Flock of Seagulls

Back to my nightmare room. It's so horrible that "I ran, I ran so far away..."

You know. Flock of Seagulls? Never mind. You'll see (hopefully) in a minute.

Against my better judgement I didn't run away, but am sticking it out and finishing this room. It room used to be called the family room, now we call it the toy room.

Remember this picture?

Poor Mr. RBR.

Well that hutch-type thing on the left is built-in. And it needs major help. It had so much junk on the shelves and I thought it looked cluttered, so I ripped the top two shelves out of it at some point and hung frames there.

I didn't have any artwork, so I bought some scrapbook paper and put it in the frames. I wanted them to be eclectic and "not quite match", if that makes sense.

And that is the end of the tutorial. Kidding! I'm kidding.

I kind of liked the mix of colors, but they looked, well, exactly like scrap book paper in frames. Not like artwork. I also thought they were too mismatched.

Then I remembered seeing a tutorial (gosh, I wish I could find it back). It was a totally different process, but they made a silhouette. And then I was thinking what I had that'd make a cool silhouette. Then I remembered this photo I took this summer.

I love it, but I haven't used it. I haven't even had it printed! But I thought the birds would make cool silhouettes. So I brought the photo into photoshop and I outlined the birds I wanted to use, until it looked like this.

I didn't know where I wanted the silhouettes placed on the page, so I printed them out and cut them out individually with an exacto knife.

I eyeballed where I wanted each to go, then traced each silhouette with pencil on the backside of a dark brown piece of paper. Then I cut out the bird shape again with an exacto so there was a hole in dark brown paper in the shape of the bird. Through this hole is where the original scrapbook paper would show through. Finally I assembled the frames again. Here's the result.

Before. Just scrapbook paper.

After. Artwork!

One thing I did learn is that smaller and quieter patterns with less contrast work best in this application. Here is an example.

I think this one is more successful than this one.

I may redo it. Or maybe not.

I used a computer to make the silhouette shapes, but you can do it with a projector, or a light table, or stencils, or... I don't know. Lots of ways. Be creative! Make your own flock of seagulls or something else. Then show me what you did.