Silhouette Stick Family

September 30, 2011

According to everyone else I might be crazy but I think minivans have an undeserved bad rep. I like them way more than SUVs. They have more rows of seats, get better gas mileage and let you walk to the back without getting out of the car (which is a life saver when the wind chill factor is below zero and you have to buckle 3 kids). But I guess they're not very glamorous. Never been a big deal in my book.

So I guess it should come as no surprise that I also like those stick figures people put on their back windows to represent their family. Tacky? Maaaaybe. But when it comes to what I drive, as I said before, I've never been very concerned about style.
So I priced them and with shipping included they were kind of expensive as far as vinyl decals go. I thought, I can do this myself for way less. So I used some stick figures jpegs I found off the internet to represent each member of our family and input them in the Silhouette software and cut my own figures (which I made 1" bigger than the online versions) for next to nothing.
I was able to find a few with characteristics to represent us. Molly has curly hair, Brian has a tie, Eloise has a rattle. But what's even better is that I'm going to make a few as Christmas gifts for friends who've expressed interest in having them for their car. Grace will have a soccer ball and hopefully I can find a boy scout stick figure for Christian.

I'm in the process of using the Silhouette for another project with a dress I'm sewing. Excited to see how it turns out. 

Another great Silhouette win! We're cheering;)

13 {comments}:

Jaime Costiglio said... Best Blogger Tips

I agree with you on the minivan front, you can't beat the ease and interior mobility factor not to mention the gas mileage, so what if weren't as cool as those ginormous SUVs! And great solution for the DIY stick people, I don't own a silhouette (and probably never will) but it sure does make great, amazing projects.

Maura said... Best Blogger Tips

We love our minivan! My husband mentions how pleased he is with it almost every time he drives it. Out here in the mountain west, SUV's definitely rule, but we're happy with what we have.

Cute decals :)

June said... Best Blogger Tips

I like looking at other people's decals and guessing about the families. Sometimes, they are holding hobby things (boy with soccer ball, girl with cat, etc).

Have you seen this riff (poking fun at the family decal phenomenon)? http://xkcd.com/946/

Nikki Schreiner said... Best Blogger Tips

Cute little decals! I would trade my SUV for a minivan IF there was one with four wheel drive!!! I live in Colorado and am super attached to my 4-wheel-drive in the snowy months. I think I'd be too afraid to leave the house without it ;)

Nikki Schreiner said... Best Blogger Tips

Cute little decals! I would trade my SUV for a minivan IF there was one with four wheel drive!!! I live in Colorado and am super attached to my 4-wheel-drive in the snowy months. I think I'd be too afraid to leave the house without it ;)

DeeDee said... Best Blogger Tips

i have a cop friend that advocates AGAINST these cute decals. this is advertising the composition of your family to all the weirdos in the world. there have been pervs that have followed people home and tried to kidnap kids because of these decals.

as cute as these are, please reconsider using these and protecting your family.

Andrea said... Best Blogger Tips

I agree about the minivans. And the decals you made are cute. And I wouldn't worry about putting it on your car. I'm sure weirdos can see into the car and tell there are kids... but maybe that's just me.

Ana said... Best Blogger Tips

I now regret us not getting a minivan. These decals are perfect christmas gifts!

Erica said... Best Blogger Tips

Do you have the upgraded Silhouette Studio, or did you use the free downloadable version? I've been trying to decided if I should buy it, but I'm still not super great at using the regular version to its full advantage..

Grosgrain said... Best Blogger Tips

@EricaI'm just using the free version. I didn't even know they had another version. I did do an upgrade though. Although I don't think it added any new functions and was still free. I use the software in conjunction with photoshop. So I took the original gif image, converted it to jpeg then cleaned it up as much as I could in photoshop (ie made it black and white, no grays) then added the image to silhouette and had it do an outline of the jpeg. Then I enlarged the outline to about 6". I've used this technique with a lot of images I've input into the Silhouette software and it usually produces good results. The original image ideally should be at least 300px x 300px. It makes thing a lot easier.

Hope that helps!

Anonymous said... Best Blogger Tips

My minivan was one of my all-time favorite vehicles.

With the kids gone, we changed over to one Honda Civic (favorite vehicle of all) and a Dodge pick-up truck. We choose to take our trash to the town landfill rather than the quite expensive pick-up service, so the truck works great for this than the van. It's also great for the occasional stock-up trip to the B. J. Wholesale store.

We're still fitting in the needs of the kids with the truck. Now they need to borrow it to move furniture, tote various two and four wheelers, and buy over-sized items. Vehicles really do define the phases of our lives.

SA said... Best Blogger Tips

Well call me wierd..I would have less kids than drive some of these ugly things found mostly in the US.

hb said... Best Blogger Tips

Any chance you'd share your silhouette studio files for the stick figures? I was just about to make some when I saw these, but why recreate the wheel 😉? They are adorable!

 
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