Photos remind us of special occasions such as vacations and birthdays or everyday events such as a hug between sisters.

While I normally save my photos in scrapbooks and photo albums, I thought it would be fun to experiment with a few to create frame-worthy silhouettes. The process turned out to be incredibly simple.

A silhouette, cut from plain black paper, manages to convey a portrait of a person, with so little detail it seems almost magical. All it takes is a few basic supplies such as tracing paper, black paper and a pair of scissors. However, the key ingredient is a photo that features the subject in profile.

I started with unremarkable photos that I would not normally scrapbook because of all the background clutter and printed them on regular 8 1/2 -by-11-inch copy paper.

The images were large, which made it easy to trace their silhouettes with tracing paper. It was also easy to reduce the traced line drawings in a copier so they would fit into the picture frame that I had selected.

After the drawings were the proper size, I used them as patterns to cut the silhouettes from black paper, being sure to exaggerate little details like eyelashes or bangs. I also took a little bit of artistic license with hairstyles in order to simplify wispy curls into a few manageable clumps.

I wanted to feature both of my nieces, so I selected a frame that had a mat with three openings, providing a place to display each child as well as a place to add some personal details.

The beauty of a silhouette is that it’s cut from black paper and can be flipped to either side, making it easy to position the girls so they are facing each other, even if the original photos were not so oriented.

Rubber stamps and stickers are perfect for labeling and embellishing the pictures in a way that is as simple as the silhouettes themselves.

Who knew it would be so easy to transform an ordinary, profile photo into a little work of art?