When I was a kid, my parents had a few cut-paper shadow portraits hanging on the walls of me and my brother. Little did I know then that we were following the lineage started by Louis XV! His finance minister was famous for his frugality, someone who didn’t think money should be wasted on fancy portrait paintings. As history would have it, the minister also had a hobby of making such cut-out portraits as my parents had of me and my brother. The finance minister’s name? Why, Étienne de Silhouette, of course.

These days parents have many more options than Louis XV did when it comes to capturing their children’s portraits. Check out what Tom Beshara is doing over at TurnYourHead.com – perfect for before and afters for those about to have a nose job, wouldn’t you say?