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| From the foot to the heart |
This week's craft is inspired by Pinterest.com and its topic containing a bunch of Valentines made with baby footprints or handprints.
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| Baby Print Valentines from Pinterest.com |
As cute as the bum-print idea is, I happen to find my one-year-olds' extremities to be super adorable, so I thought it would be a great idea to make a footprint Valentine for the father of my twins. I especially like the idea of taking one footprint from each of them and combining them into the shape of a heart.
Supplies
This is just what I used. Obviously, variations can easily be applied
- black and red acrylic paint*
- vellum (or semi-tranluscent) paper
- Scotch tape
- small, thick book
- sponge
- scissors
- paint brush
- Elmer's glue
- Mod Podge
- glitter
- puffy paint
- toothpick
- 8 x 10 inch float frame**
**A float frame is just a picture frame with two pieces of glass that are meant to sandwich the picture in rather than having a solid backing. I got mine at Michael's.
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| Float frame from Michael's |
- Oh yeah, and don't forget those little feet—super important
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| Henry's foot (left) and Winry's foot (right), February 2016 |
One Small Step...
The first step (pun intended) in this process is getting the footprints from the tiny people. This can be a little tricky since mine are only about 16-months-old and not the best at staying still. I recommend doing it when they're strapped into their highchair and distracted by something yummy.
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| Gimme that foot, you little face |
I used bright red acrylic paint for Winry's foot, and mixed a little black in to make a darker red for Henry's foot. Use the sponge to apply the paint evenly over the foot. I would pat it with the sponge too so you don't have paint streaks showing up in the footprint. Keep a damp cloth handy to wipe foot off once you're done before baby has a chance to toe-paint anything.
Pressing Tip: To make the foot-pressing easier, I lightly taped the vellum paper onto a small book so I had something flat and substantial to press the foot against.
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| Paper taped to book |
Also, make sure you have more than one sheet of paper handy in case the first try doesn't turn out well. Babies like to throw challenges your way now and again.
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| Paint footprints on vellum paper |
Once you get some good ones, let the prints completely dry. Cut them out however you like once they're ready.
Add Some Sparkle
The classy thing to do would probably have been to place the footprints into a heart shape in the float frame and maybe paint a simple heart around them, but I found puffy paint and glitter, so the classy option was immediately voted down.
First, I figured out how I wanted the cut-out footprints to overlap and dabbed a couple of dots of Elmer's glue to the backs of the vellum paper in order to tack it down onto the back sheet of glass from the float frame.
Glue Warning: You may want to keep these dots of glue small or possibly brushed out a little. I kept mine in dot form and later realized that they made the vellum paper wrinkle a little where the glue had made contact since it was a little too much concentrated goop in one area. Double-sided tape may be a better option.
I then brushed Mod Podge into a heart shape around the mounted footprints and sprinkled on the glitter.
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| Be quick and generous with the Mod Podge so that it doesn't dry before you get a chance to glitterize it |
After letting that dry and removing the excess glitter, I painted the words above and below the feet and added a different color of glitter while the paint was still wet.
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| Puffy paint for the outside—I wanna touch it! |
The puffy paint is applied last on top of the front of the glass to add a little depth. I simply traced the shape of the heart and added a few dots. I made a few streaks in the puffy paint heart with a toothpick.
Ta-da!
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| We Heart (or Feet) Daddy |
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| Henry says, "Happy Valentine's Day, Daddy!!!" |
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