Fun Easy Portraits by Printing on Transparency Film!

We made these fun easy portraits for my daughter’s 6th grade graduation ceremony to line the walls. The kids chose a red carpet theme which was so fun to put the decorations together for. I found a few pictures of these cool portraits online and I had to figure out how to make them easily and frugally… The answer was printing on transparency film!

Cool DIY Portraits

First my friend took a picture of each of the students against a white wall of the school. They were told to look like they were thinking about the future – basically to not smile or really look directly into the camera. She took all these with her phone and they came out great!

Next I used the app Snapseed on my phone. I opened each picture and turned it black and white. Then I hit the “tune image” button and turned the contrast way up to +80-100. You just have to kind of play with it to get it where you like it. Then I hit the “drama” filter and looked at all the different options but usually used Drama 2. Some of the pictures were darker than others so I would end up using the Bright 1 or 2. Then I saved them all to my google drive (or you can email them to yourself) so I could open them up on my computer.

From my computer I was able to print them all at home by printing on transparency film. I printed them on (click purple text!) Apollo Quick Dry Universal Ink Jet Transparency Film. There are two sides to the film, make sure you print on the rough side – I learned the hard way and the whole thing smeared off!

Next I cut a white piece of copy paper to the same size and mounted the paper on black cardstock so the picture would stand out. Then the kids got to have fun! I took in a bag of scrapbook paper, scissors, glue, ribbon, craft punches, etc and let the kids design whatever background they wanted. It was amazing to see all the cool designs they came up with. For the lips, my friend found that using highlighter on the rough side worked perfectly!

I then used a little glue stick on each corner to attach the film to the matted paper. For the wall at graduation, I also had them each write down something they want to do in the future starting with the phrase “I will…”. I added a star at the top with their name on it and added all of them to a long roll of Pacon ArtKraft butch paper (click purple text!). The portraits were the focal point of the decorations and I loved how they turned out! The kids all got to keep them after the ceremony too!