Silhouette miniature original portraits hand-cut in minutes for gifts

Silhouette profile miniatures past and present, have been cherished in the 17^th, 18^th, 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st century. The art of scissors cutting profiles freehand, has been prized by royalty, celebrities, and families. At one point, the Pennsylvania Dutch, would secure their family miniature silhouettes in their Bibles. The French established the art’s popularity, but it was silhouettest, Augustin Edouart, who named the art “silhouette” after Etienne de Silhouette. He was the most prolific American Silhouette artist, the first “silhouette man”. Today, there are four people calling themselves that. John Miers also used that title for himself. A few women call themselves “The silhouette lady.” My favorite of these women, is Kathryn Flocken.

Have you ever watched a genuine paper profile artist hand-cut a likeness of a person or pet, without a sketch, light, or shadow, in minutes. It appears like magic—they look and cut, from sight. This is an especially great gift during the holidays, for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, or Father’s Day, for a loved one or a best friend. SilhouettesbyCindi offers original, one-of-a-kind silhouettes for purchase, signed. The silhouette ladies, Kathryn and Cindi, also do silhouettes at weddings, events, business conventions, and celebrity gifting suites. They are also a top fundraising idea for schools and non-profits. Kathryn, can do silhouettes a whole school for a fundraiser. Just take terrific profile pictures, and go to PaperPortraits.com and pay on line securely through PayPal, and she will send back the lovely silhouettes, done, mounted, signed, framed. These are not photo shopped, they are authentic. Kathryn and Cindi do interior details, groupings—one face cut into another, these are the type of museum silhouette art to invest in. Holly Harwood Skolkin also does silhouettes. Silhouette art talent is inherited. Cindi and Holly Harwood have three to four generations of profiling and paper cutting in their genes. Although both started doing silhouettes in their teen-age years, and during college, they both slowed down while raising children, and doing other careers—Holly an inner-eye photographer, Cindi, a writer, publicist, and director and founder of a cancer non-profit, The Rose Ribbon Foundation. People can donate to cancer causes by purchasing silhouettes from Cindi Harwood Rose, she calls them silhouettes for survivors through roseribbonfoundation.org.

Many silhouette artists offer their services on-line such as Paperportraits.com which sells three silhouettes for $25.00. There are over 15 tutorials on E-how, on how to cut a silhouette, but those are for the novice, non-artist. These are not silhouettes, they are shadow tracings, or photo-shopped color-ins, and rarely really look like the person, as the shadow is often distorted. I examined and commented as “Cindi Rose Silhouette Artist” on all of them. The only good one, was the tutorial that suggested how to make silhouette images of full figures for parties. The problem is the tools on these e-how tutorials. They use cardboard, and rough paper. They cannot get the lovely smooth cuts skilled silhouette artists get. In addition, since they cannot draw a portrait with a pen or pencil (unless they are maybe an art teacher skilled in that?), how could they translate the shadow, and actually do a good job cutting it out afterwards, where it was not clumsy? They paste the art with Elmer’s glue, which leaves tell-tale signs. For great silhouette ideas look at You Tube silhouette artist and view the speed, quality, personality, and style of the artists. Also, look at the Guild of American Paper cutters site, and see the history of the marvelous art of silhouettes, historical, contemporary, modern, and cultural—past and present.