Make your own silhouette art

A hand lettered table decoration

Homemade table decorations are always the nicest because they’re so personal. And this time we’ve come up with something quite novel: a kitchen tray with a paper silhouette design, decorated with hand lettering. Cutting a silhouette out of paper is not as difficult as it might seem at first glance. The easiest way is to use our template of course, but if you have a suitable photograph you can create your own template on your PC. For the hand lettering or brush lettering, you’ll need flexible brush pens, like the ones supplied in the Colour Happy Box. This box contains 20 edding 1340 brush pens and the ingenious Brushpen Colour Mixer, a clever tool which is capable of creating up to 190 colour shades from just 20 standard colours. Before you start lettering, we recommend you practise a few exercises with the brush pen. By applying varying amounts of pressure to the nib you can achieve both broad and fine strokes. To prevent the silhouette from getting dirty or scratched when the tray is in use, use a protective sheet of acrylic glass over the top.

Categories: Kitchen
Hand lettering
Downloads: Images (ZIP)

Step-by-step

Step 1

Print out the silhouette image in the size you want and cut it out. There are no set rules when it comes to lettering – how it looks is entirely up to you. You can use a variety of fonts, such as script or block lettering, and either narrow or broad letterforms. It’s a good idea to try out a range of styles beforehand.

Step 2

Using a brush pen can make expressive fonts look really beautiful; as you write, apply pressure on the downstrokes and contrast these by making the upstrokes really light. Varying the distance between the letters also gives you more scope for design. You can mix colours however you want with the help of the Brushpen Colour Mixer. The edding 1340 brush pen is also great for adding finishing touches such as shading, fine decorations and embellishments.