An angel came out of my Shoebox today in the form of a photograph of a little girl dressed like an angel and standing in a flower pot. Viewer Barbara Bertonneau of El Segundo, Calif., sent the idea to me, along with a complete explanation of how the charming effect was created.
Barbara first took a full-length photo of her four-year-old granddaughter, Chanelle, dressed in her bathing suit. Chanelle posed with her arms were slightly away from her body. Bertonneau then covered the entire bathing suit with a white adhesive-backed paper so it looked as though Chanelle was wearing a white suit.
At a local copy center, Bertonneau had the picture enlarged so the image was 10" tall. Next, Bertonneau cut out and laminated the photo. Where you do the cutting depends on which type of lamination you use. If you have your picture laminated at the copy center, a heat system will most likely be used. In this case, you must leave a small border of the laminating plastic around the picture, so the picture must be cut both before and after laminating. If using a Xyron laminator that works on the adhesive system, you can cut right up to the outline of the figure after laminating, and only one cutting will be necessary. For further stability, have the picture printed on card stock rather than paper.
Following the laminating and cutting, Bertonneau dressed the little girl as an angel with sheer gold-trimmed ribbon, and gold-wrapped wire wings. Barbara glued a dowel to the back, and placed the picture in a foam-filled flowerpot. The picture was later used for the front of Bertonneau's Christmas cards.
Bertonneau didn't stop with Chanelle. She has six granddaughters, so they all had to become angels. Additionally, Bertonneau dressed her grandsons as toy soldiers using cutouts for the uniforms, then added a gold Victorian trim to make them special.
I assumed that all the children loved their counterparts. However, Bertonneau said it was the mothers who really went crazy over them, and so did I.
