The Making of the Beatles Portraits!

I made this for my daughter Becca for Christmas because she loves the Beatles and I wanted t something different than going to the store and buying her something! This one was a little of a challenge for me, believe it or not, my first "large scale" portrait. I actually cheated a little, instead of cutting the whole thing out as one I cut them into four sections, just didn't trust myself doing the whole thing and only having a weekend to complete it. Enjoy the pics, click on the thumbnails to get a larger picture!

The first thing that needed to be done, this is getting redundant, is to develop the pattern on the computer. This one took a fairly long time because I wanted it to look realistic but with enough strength for the connecting pieces. I printed out the patterns, glued them on the 1/4 inch Baltic Birch, drilled the pilot holes, then cut them into their individual portraits.

Here are the portraits one by one as I was doing them! I know some of the pictures are "darker" than the others throughout the page, I did that so you get a better visual of the depth, blades and all around making of them. Aside from that, can you put the names to these portraits?

Now that we have all of them cut out, time to put them back together and remove the pattern. Depending on how I plan on finishing the item is depending on how I take the pattern off. I normally just use straight lighter fluid on the paper, let soak for about 2 minutes, then peal the pattern right off. A quick wipe with a rag and the wood is good to go because the lighter fluid will evaporate. Then I stained it golden oak!

The last step was the presentation of the whole thing. I decided to make a "window" type setting on it using 1/4" x 1/4" strips of oak stained dark walnut. This gave it more strength as well as "hid" the junctions where I put the pieces back together. I then backed it with a piece of lauan that had a 1/4" x 1/4" oak border also (so I could put a hanger on the back) and a piece of dark blue velvetine. There you have it, all done! It was a fun project to do, maybe next time I won't cut them into pieces and do it as one whole portrait...