Silhouettes for your Christmas Tree



Have you ever made your own Christmas tree ornaments? Maybe not since you were in elementary school. I still have a few of my ornaments that I made when I was a kid, and while they aren’t the most beautiful on my tree, they definitely are the most meaningful ones. Besides, now that my kids are helping to decorate the tree, they like to see the old ornaments with pictures of Mom and Dad on them as children. It’s part of my own family history just to still have a few of those ornaments hanging on the tree.

It might be fun this holiday season for you to think about making your own heritage ornaments. I will share a few ideas with you in this post and others about how you can make meaningful ornaments that also tell a bit of your family history.

My first idea is all about making a silhouette ornament of your children. Silhouettes are fairly easy to make now with modern technology, digital cameras, and plenty of photo editing software out there. Simply take a few profile pictures of your children, and then shrink them to the size you want for your tree with photo editing software.

There are a few ways you can display the silhouettes on your tree. First, think of your traditional silhouette. Black paper backed by white paper. So, you could cut the silhouettes out on solid black paper, then matte on white paper so that the silhouette will stand out against the dark Christmas tree. The white paper can either be square like a picture frame, or can simply be a second silhouette. If you decide to make it a second silhouette, do not make the white paper outline too large. If you do this, you will lose the shape of the profile.

Consider, writing their name on the silhouette and the year in white pen. Start a tradition of making a new silhouette of each child every year. Watching how their profile changes each year can be a fun holiday tradition for you to start. When they are older and you have many silhouettes, consider stringing them together to make a fun garland. Give them the garland of their own silhouettes over the years when they move out and start to decorate their own Christmas tree.

If you want a more durable version, consider creating an ornament on a wood block with their silhouette and your favorite Christmas Scrapbooking paper. Take a 4×4 size wood block and drill holes in the top to put ribbon through it. Paint the block in your favorite color to coordinate with your tree. Using mod podge, adhere your favorite scrapbooking paper onto the block. After that dries, then apply your black silhouette that you have created. Cover again with mod podge to protect the image. This idea will give the silhouette a more festive look, and will definitely help your ornament stand out on the tree.

Silhouettes are making a comeback, and they are a way to preserve a moment in time for your family history.

Meredith Ethington is the author of this blog. To learn more about Meredith, and her history with Scrapbooking and Genealogy, go here.


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