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My Pins! - Update 8/12/12! Added Halloween Pins!

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Ok, I'm envious of your display skills! I have to ask, looking at the pictures of the silhouettes I see that you've got a combination of pretty good hard to find pins, and then others that are pretty common. How do you decide which pins will go into a silhouette? Do you do it by character, theme, or simply just accumulate enough pins to make something? Also, do you create an outline of the picture to put pins on or are you free handing the designs? I'd love to attempt something like this someday! :)
 
Mischiefmanaged said:
Ok, I'm envious of your display skills! I have to ask, looking at the pictures of the silhouettes I see that you've got a combination of pretty good hard to find pins, and then others that are pretty common. How do you decide which pins will go into a silhouette? Do you do it by character, theme, or simply just accumulate enough pins to make something? Also, do you create an outline of the picture to put pins on or are you free handing the designs? I'd love to attempt something like this someday! :)
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Those are tough questions! :lol: Short answer: All of the above.

Now I'll try to tackle the long answer:


How do I pick the pins?

It has been different for each of the silhouettes and I have been learning as I go. My downfall is that I'm not always a good planner when it comes to this stuff. I kind of just start, see where it takes me, and then somehow make it work.

This all kind of came about because I wanted a way to display my "random" pins because I was running out of pin books and traditional framing takes up way too much wall space for very few pins. The "random" pins are pins I like but didn't really fit into any core theme that I collected. Originally they were in a giant Mickey head display that some people may have seen over on Dizpins. I had grown tired of that and having pins the the 8x10 frames isn't very secure. I really wanted to move to a cork board and that is when the full body Mickey silhouette idea came to me.

Mickey:
If you look at the Mickey (and I'm talking Mickey only, not the frames around him) he contains mostly classic character rack-type pins in the feet and body up to the neck. Once I got to the head there are some other types of pins in there like characters dressed as other characters, scene, rides, etc. Why you ask? That's easy....I started at his feet and by the time I got to the neck I ran out of classic character rack-type pins! :) The Tinker Bell ride pins in his ear for example...I had no intention of using those when I started. But I needed something and they were small enough that they worked. Or the tail...that was a last minute add. I hadn't intended for him to have a tail and then decided he needed one so all of those piarate cutie pins went there. A lot of former "trader pins" were converted to "keepers" because of this process!!!


Tinker:
After the Mickey had been done for awhile I started getting the itch to do another character. I decided on Tinker and began raiding my collection and traders again. By this time I had very few classic cut character pins left so I had to dig into some of my larger scene and series type pins. That is why you see some of those Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Kiss, and carousel pins in there. I didn't want to dip into my core collections for these and those pins were all I had to work with. This made creating the Tinker very difficult.

What I learned from this one is that these are very difficult to do without a large selection of pins to choose from. And the larger the pin, the more difficult it is to work with. The Tinker silhouette proved to me that the normal rack sized pins were the best to use for this type of thing. It can be done with larger pins, but you are very limited on where you can put those pins. And they tend to break up the flow of the piece in general. That's why I chose to use the Beauty and the Beast as the bun of her hair. I needed to use it because I didn't have many pins left, but it needed to be in a place where it didn't stand out like a sore thumb. If I had put it smack dab in the middle of her body that would have looked strange.

And it was just dumb luck that I had pins for her wand! And when I got the stick of her wand done only then did I realize that I had that Jiminy conscience pin but I couldn't find it anywhere!!! I think it took me about a week to remember where that was and it was killing me!


Cinderella:
Ok, lessons learned from Tinker. Small rack sized pins are the best for the silhouettes. I had always liked collecting the core character pins but it was just here and there. After the Tinker silhouette it because an "official" collection of mine. If there is a cut character pin of a character I don't already have - I want it. So, that was my new mission...to accumulate enough character pins for my next silhouette.

As I got more pins I'd put them on the cork board. Big mistake! I was storing them on the cork board I was going to use and that was not a good idea because they left a bunch of holes behind. :( The other problem I had with Cinderella is that I couldn't find the same color of paint that I used on Mickey and Tinker. She's just going to have to be redone at some point....

I was collecting pins for the next silhouette and finally thought I had enough and even had a bunch of duplicates. Like three different versions of Rapunzel, three different Evil Queens, etc. And you will also see that I tore apart my villains frame. That is no more. Ok, my next step was to decide who I was going to do and I settled on Cinderella. I started with her arms, moved to the head, and then worked my way down. I had thought I would have enough pins.....Wrong!!! Her skirt was just massive and took a lot of pins. So many that I used up all of the alternate version pins I didn't think I would use and once again dipped into my pin books. That's why along the bottom of her skirt you see pins like Alice in the tea cup, Figaro, Fox & Hound, etc. They aren't cut character pins but I needed them!



Do you do it by character, theme, or simply just accumulate enough pins to make something?

I basically accumulate until I think I have enough but I do try to group the characters by movie within each silhouette. For example, in the Mickey you will see all of the Incredibles and Bug's Life characters in the shoes or in the Cinderella one you see them pretty much grouped by movie until you get to the bottom of the dress. It doesn't always work out, but I try to do that when I can.



Also, do you create an outline of the picture to put pins on or are you free handing the designs?

Yes, I create an outline. I don't freehand the pin placement but I do freehand the outline. The only thing I don't think I freehanded on the outlines are Mickey's head and ears. There I used a clock and pot lid for the circular outlines. :) I do not draw the outline on the cork itself, I draw it on tracing paper. I then place the pins on and when I am done I tear the paper off. That part can sometimes be a pain because I have to lift the pins up sometimes to get the paper out.



I'd love to attempt something like this someday!

Go for it! :) But word of caution....it is not for the impatient! Finding the right placement takes a lot of patience and determination. Remember, the wider selection of pins you have the easier it is. Sometimes it just falls together and other times you could be stuck on the same spot for hours. On this last one, Cinderella's head took a long time to do because it was a small space with curves and it took many tries to find the right combination of pins that would work.

For anyone thinking of trying this, start simple. Try to do just a basic outline like a Mickey head. And go big. The bigger you make it the easier it is to fit the pins into it and create curves or corners.

Things you will need:

- A cork board. I can't remember the exact dimensions of the ones I use but I think they are around 24x36

- Spray paint. Cork color is not that appealing. Pick a color that will contrast with your pins and make them "pop".

- Painting tape. To protect the frame of the cork board when painting the cork. Be careful when pulling it off. It ripped off some of the pain on my Cinderella frame.

- Tracing paper to draw your outline.

- About 200 standard sized pins. :lol: I'm not sure how many mine hold, but it takes a lot!

- A good supply of Mini Pins!!! These are kind of important. Sometimes you just can't get the pins to fit together right so you will need mini pins to fill in those gaps.

- Lots and lots and lots of patience! :)



Good luck to anyone who tries this! And sorry this is so long, but I wanted to try to explain it the best I could.
 
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Dude. You have some SERIOUS talent. I love the carousel display, and I really REALLY love all the silhouettes. I wish I could do something like that. Absolutely gorgeous!
 
Wow!! Simply gorgeous presentation! So creative, and I love the pin collections making out the characters, particularly the Tinker Bell one! :)

Thank you so much for sharing!
 
I'm blown away!!! have any idea how many you have total? This has to be the best collection i have ever seen...all things considered. pins, quality, quantity, display and wow factor. congradulations you just made a lot of envious pin collectors :)
 
Thank you everyone!!!

thekaratekid said:
Simply amazing!!!!!!!!! Just wondering, what made you put the PODM in that order?
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I think I just put them in the order they were released and then just used others for fillers but, I must not have been satisfied with it because I've already reordered them! I'll try to take a different pic after I get a few more from this year.


ShawnyD1984 said:
I'm blown away!!! have any idea how many you have total? This has to be the best collection i have ever seen...all things considered. pins, quality, quantity, display and wow factor. congradulations you just made a lot of envious pin collectors :)
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Thank you so much! :) Well, according to Pinpics I have about 2676 pins which seems crazy to me because it doesn't seem like I have that many. I'd guess that there are about 150-200 in each of the character boards so that's somewhere between 300-600 on those.


caligirlUCR said:
I love the POMH frame - but question - what will you do when they continue it for a third year? :0) also where did u get that amazing walt pic?
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There should be enough room if they got for a third year which I'm thinking they will probably do. I'll just have to have the poster reprinded and cover the Mickey. :( If they go four years (which they technically could because they have enough movies) I'm screwed. :( I'll either have to have virtually no background, getting rid of Walt completely, or find another board and rearrange. Guess I've got a few years to figure that one one. And Walt came fro the internet. :)
 
The Walt PODM frame is mind-blowing, as are all of your others. You have an amazing talent, Erica. Would you be willing to share how you mounted and framed the PODM pins?
 
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