Dog Silhouette Art

We’ve been settled in our apartment now for almost 2 months and there is still one box left to unpack. It’s always the last box I unpack and sat for 3+ months during our last move. Any guesses?

Yep. Art and frames.

Our parents are coming to visit in a week and a half and there is nothing like a deadline to push me to get started. Our apartment is small with few walls, so there isn’t a ton of space to work with. There is just something about art on the walls that transforms a house into a home for me.

Unfortunately, art doesn’t transfer so easily from one space to another. I’ve been trying to get creative with what I already have without spending any money. You may remember I made our bathroom art a few weeks back.

This past weekend I decided to tackle the wall above the dog’s food and water bowls. The wall is narrow and the hallway is short, so I knew I didn’t want something that was going to be too big and overbearing for the space. I thought it’d be cute to have something above the food containers that designated whose side was whose.

I had the idea of creating a silhouette of each dog. People so often comment on how similar Ollie & Tucker look. Sure, they have the same coloring, but they are different in just about every other way. I thought a silhouette would be a great depiction to show how different they look by shape.

I’m sure Bryan would love it if I could find a single project that didn’t involve his help in some way. Naturally, I dragged him into our bedroom to help me pose each dog for a picture. I put them in front of one of the many blank walls and Bryan lured with treats while I snapped away. I didn’t focus on any aspect of the picture other than their profile.

This was my favorite of Ollie. I wish I had removed their collars first.

And little Tuck.

When I was confident I had gotten the pictures I wanted, I loaded them on my computer and narrowed down to my favorites. I cropped each picture so that both dogs were the same size. I put the pictures side by side in a Word document and scaled them to my liking.

Then I just printed. One thing I didn’t really think about was my prinker ink levels. I had a little hiccup when I discovered I only had black ink. The pictures printed out looking a little ghostly and shadowless. I improvised by lining the printed page up with my monitor to trace the outline of each dog. Just one extra step.

Then I simply cut them out. If you’re smarter than I am, you can skip the step above and go right to the cutting. Here’s what I ended up with. You can’t even tell right? …. Just say no…..

Next I picked through my pile of scrapbooking paper to choose a background and “shadow”color. Since I decided not to hang my painting of Ollie in his Virginia Tech bandana, I naturally went with orange and maroon (Hokie colors) to make up for it.

I took each dog cut out and traced them onto the backside of the colored paper.

And cut them out once again.

I gave each silhouette an opposite background color for contrast.

The last step was frame and hang! So easy!

Ollie has a rounder head, short snout, and protruding lips.

Tucker has a more elongated head and snout than Ollie and ears that are more pronounced.

I hung each picture above their respective food bowls. As a finishing touch, I added the “A Hokie Dog Lives Here” sign. Bryan and I bought it at a local Charlotte farmer’s market 3 years ago.

Since I had all the items on hand already, this project was 100% FREE. No complaints over here!

Now anyone who comes over will know who the real bosses are of the house.

Oh, and if you want to know how Ollie and Tucker feel about this….

…well, I think they were too tired from pictures to notice.