Victorian Times

I found out one of the limitations of posting a crafty activity every day,and that is there is not much room for error.  When I was putting today's post together, which took a fair amount of preparation, I realised that the glue I used wasn't necessarily the best for the job.  You'll see what I mean...

Today's activity was a small (5x7") framed victorian silhouette picture of my children:

For this activity I was inspired by some Victorian pictures that my children had done at a Salt Museum a while ago and which take pride of place on our mantlepiece:

They really took their role (of not smiling) seriously!

Our family house is Victorian so I thought it would be nice to have some pictures done in the style of days gone by to compliment the others.

When I was in our brand new Paperchase shop recently I spotted some lovely olde mirror frames on some wrapping paper, and they were in the sale too!  They also had some baroque style tissue paper which is what I used for the background.

I took pictures of the boys today against a bright window (it was brighter than usual because of the snow) sideways on and then used my photo editing program to darken them completely.

I cut the printed images out and stuck them down onto the shiny mirrored frames.  The frames were stuck onto the tissue paper and the tissue paper onto card.  When I had done that it made it all too dark so I used one of my favourite stamps (a swirl!) and some white stazon ink and 'framed' the frames.  The reason I had a problem was the glue I used, PVA, made everything a little lumpy, I should have used a 'flatter finish' glue.

I also could do with a silver coloured ornate frame rather than a gold, so I may do this project again some day and correct these minor errors.  Still pleased with the general result though and I'm sure the children's grandparents will love it!