How to make your own cardboard cutout.
Also known as a Standee or life size cutouts, or a STANDUP.

This life size standee is of my youngest son.  I made this standee and really had some fun with it.  I put it in the laundry room, and when my wife came around the corner, boy did she jump! 

On first impression, you really do think he's standing there because it's made to be his exact height.  That's why it's called "life size". 

The ink, paper, glue and cardboard will cost about $12-15. I made mine out of 1/4" tempered hardboard, which I grew up calling "Masonite" so it could handle rough use.

To buy a custom made lifesize photo cutout would cost you nearly $200.  Yeah, it wouldn't have the little seams you see in the picture at the left, but two hundred dollars for no-seams?

You can make your own lifesize photo cutout of foam core board purchased at art and stationery stores or even make a cardboard standee. A perfect party decoration! Oh, man! Are these fun at a party. Put one in the bathroom!

The whole trick to making life size cutouts, is to use Brad Couper's program called Almost Breathing to print the life-sized sculpture image across several pages. 

This is how I spread the glue on the back of each print. 

You can use spray glue, but I wanted to be able to slide the pages into position and I don't think the spray-on glues allow that.

I used about 2/3rds of an 8 oz bottle to do the above cutout. 

That's a foam paint roller.  You could use a brush or even a sponge.

If you make your lifesize standee out of foam board or cardboard all you need to cut it is a knife. 

I made this life size photo cutout out of hardboard, so I had to use a saber saw to make the cut.  Since I had to cut from the image side (so I could see where to cut), I temporarily glued a paper shop towel to the saber saw so it wouldn't scratch the cutout.

As you see above, the program segments the lifesize image into page size prints that you paste together into the finished standup. 

Look at the photo to the right you will see the guide lines the software prints so you know just how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  It even numbers each print by column and row, but who needs that?

Something kinda neat it does is allow you to NOT print the parts of your lifesize photo that will be cut away in the standee.

Look at the photo to the left and see that the corner pages were not printed because they were not needed to print my son's picture.  Pretty cool!

Speaking of not printing pages, the software allows you to go back and print any of the pages you want in case you mess one up.  You don't have to reprint the whole thing!

To me, the coolest thing the software does is it lets you determine how tall (in inches or metric) you want the final lifesize standup to be! 

You can make a lifesize cutout of a child and it will be just as tall as the child is! See the picture at the bottom of this page...it really is lifesize! Planning a party? Hmmmm.

The Brad tells me the program runs on all computers that have Mac, Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7 operating systems.  Boy!  That's pretty much all of them.

You buy the program online and download it to your hard drive and start using it right away.  Picture too dark, too light, too anything? No problem!  The program even has a FREE built-in image editor to help you improve your photos.  And it's real easy to use.

Use it to make as many LIFEsize cutouts as you want. 

It comes with an e-book which has some GREAT tips, like how to save ink by blanking out all the background before you print.  (I forgot to do that with my son's cutout!!)

It comes with a 30 day money back guarantee and Brad Couper, who sells it, has been very helpful when I have asked a question.  And he gets back to you quickly too!

CLICK THIS to go to Brad's place where you can download the software and ebook.

Go see Brad's program now