Silhouettes

Ever try your hand at silhouettes? All you need is the right picture, inkscape (free program on the net), and a little bit of time. This is a pic of my fabulous sister-in-law, Jill. Seeing as how she's so beautiful, I don't think she'll mind me using her as an example... :)

This picture had a lot of good things going for it. The first is that the focus is on the person. A lot of photos show the background as well as the foreground...which makes it hard for inkscape to decipher what to use in the picture when you trace the bitmap. It also had a lot of good contrast. Plus, it was just a pretty picture.
It's really a very simple process. You import the picture into inkscape, then go to path, trace bitmap. Once the screen comes up, choose brightness cutoff, then update. This will show you what it will look like. If you like it, click OK. It will create that image over the image you already had on the drawing page. Usually, the image has way too many nodes (the squares) that would be very difficult and time consuming for your cricut to cut out. You will have to simplify the picture. You can do this in two ways. An easy way to decrease the number of nodes is to press control L, or path, simplify. I don't typically like using this route though when the image is a face. The program doesn't do a great job at keeping the right features from being simplified too much. I like to press the node button and delete nodes a little at a time until I get the desired effect.
This is another silhouette I made that I will eventually use. I'm thinking about creating one of each of my kids; however, I don't have a good enough camera to take the pictures that will create a good silhouette. You'll find that's the hardest part...getting a good picture!

If you want the Joseph Smith silhouette, you can find it here:

Joseph Smith - .svg