Not long ago I thought, "hey, I want to make a cast of Oscar's hand." And a few clicks later I found Casting Keepsakes, had enough in Paypal (I think it was less than $12 including shipping), and a few days later the stuff was on my porch. Gotta love the internet (when it's not blacked out of course).

Extreme close up of that wrist fat roll!

The careful observer will notice the flat spots on his knuckes and his surprisingly thin fingertips so a few tips for ya:

• Don't put the molding compound in a vessel that is deeper than your childs arm is long (ie no 44 oz soda cups for 7 month old babies)
• Don't try to do this at bedtime/with a tired or hungry child
• Don't do this while your child is dressed in a brand new long sleeved outfit
• Do really swirl around the plaster when you pour it in

Other than that I'd recommend the product and the project. It's kind of a fun little doodad and in a few years we can go, "awww, can you believe his hand was that tiny (and his fingers were that flat!)"

Because I'm a week behind on everything, including New Years, I'm still working on my resolutions. But I think one will be to post one tutorial here per month. But then the internet is FULL of AWESOME tutorials whereas mine tend to be a bit more...hmmm... homespun? Novice? Crappy? So I'm also considering a resolution of making one thing per week all year.

Either way, this Crazy (Awesome) Silhouette Art project totally fits the bill.

Supplies:

• a piece of wood or plywood or some other smooth surface (I used a square of 1/4 inch masonite about 14x14 inches)
• photo of your subject in profile
• Contact paper
• Scissors or really, really sharp exacto
• spray primer in black (or some other cool color)
• assorted acrylic paints and brushes
• spray on clear coat (if desired)
• string and glue gun (or some sort of hanger)

Process:

1. Take a photo of your subjects in action. Aim for a neutral(ish) background and faces in profile. Convert to black and white and crop as desired. Print out on regular typing paper the size you want your silhouette to be (I printed the image below on 8.5x11" paper)
2. Spray your wood with primer. This will be the color of your silhouette. You only really need to spray the area where your silhouette will be. see how the wood below has primer on one side? And the photo is printed (ignore the blue stripes--printer issues!)
3. Tape your contact paper sticky side up to a self healing mat. Tape your photo on top and cut out image using exacto. (notes: you might want to outline with a pen first to ensure you know where to cut. If your exacto is anything less than razor sharp use double stick tape or a glue stick to adhere the photo to the back of the contact paper and cut out with scissors)
4.  Peel it all apart and stick your contact paper silhouette to your primered wood. Press down the edges really well.
5. 
6. Here's the trick I learned about on HGTV at some point....spray paint again over the contact paper mask. This should help keep the edges clean as they'll be sealed down with matching paint!
7. Now go to town with the acrylic paints. Choose colors you like and don't worry about it. I recommend employing a child to help--it'll force you to be spontaneous and to not try to do anything too fancy. Or you could just paint it a solid color (if you're booooring....)
8. 
9. That red smear looked vaguely heart shaped so I made it a bit more heart shaped. That was about it as far as trying to do anything planned.
   
   
10. Watch your paint dry. (in our case, force your child to take a bath with the promise of peeling off contact paper when she's done.)
    
11. PEEL! Carefully peel off the contact paper with fingers crossed. Yay! I hope it looks awesome.
12. If desired, spray on a coat of polyurethane or acrylic clear coat. If you're hanging your work attach the fastener. For this light masonite a hot glued a piece of ribbon to the back and it seemed to work fine.
13. Hang and enjoy!

Whoa (or as Biscuit would say, who ah). It's tough getting back in the school/work/daycare routine after two weeks of sleeping in. Biscuit has been reading Judy Moody books nonstop (when you put books on your Santa list in our family, odds are you'll get what you ask for. Or, in her case, six of what you ask for). She was reading aloud to me and I discovered she was pronouncing "whoa" phonetically. It is "who ah" if you sound it out. And gross really should rhyme with moss and toss shouldn't it?

So, whoa, we survived our first day back. I'm still plugging away at New Year's projects here on January 3 trying to wrap up 2011 before too much of 2012 goes by. I must admit, I was rather proud that I completed my Snapshot-a-Day challenge. I think I only missed two days all year. Granted there are a ton of terrible photos but I did it. I'm trying to compile them all into a (very expensive even WITH the half off deal snapfish is running) photobook by January 6 when this particular half off photobooks deal ends. It's tedious but sort of fun to look back on little bits of the year. I'm up to August.

My other year long thing which wasn't a project and wasn't exactly planned was my notes book. My sister gave me a recycled cover blank book last year and all year long I used it to jot down anything and everything. I also let Biscuit write notes in it and pasted in some of her little notes and scraps I find lying around.

Lots of grocery lists, menu plans, to do lists and the like--completely haphazard but sort of an interesting record of the year. I was almost out of space so I got a brand new book for 2012. Thanks, Laura!

I'm not sure if I'll do any year long projects for 2012 (other than the haphazard book) but so far I've taken a photo-a-day just in case. Anyone seen any interesting year long stuff?