Creating Keepsakes: Foot Prints

It's no secret that babies grow too fast--one minute they're tiny and totally helpless, and the next minute they're stealing your glasses and crawling away with them shrieking like a total mad man. (or maybe that's just what happens in my house?) Anyway, the bottom line is that it's really nice to make some keepsakes from when they were tiny and little to help you remember later just how tiny and little they really were. 

One of my favourite ways to do that is by getting an imprint of their hands or feet in Salt Dough. When your little one is really little that can be a bit challenging though as you need to press their hand/foot rather hard into the dough to get a good imprint. If this is likely to be an issue for you--have no fear! Rather than press their hand or foot INTO the dough, you can leave a paint print on the dough instead. 

We decided to make a footprint ornament for each of the grandparents for Christmas, and we did ours with blue acrylic paint and Salt Dough. Here's the instructions for making your own Salt Dough keepsake using Acrylic paint:

Ingredients for Salt Dough:

- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 cup salt
- 1/2 cup water

Directions:

1. Mix together flour, salt and water until dough forms. Add water slowly to make sure you don't over water dough. If dough is too sticky, add more flour.

2. Roll dough out to desired thickness.

3. Apply paint to bottom of child's foot with paint brush and plant their foot firmly on the salt dough, trying to push down each toe to make sure they leave a print.

4. Wash off baby's foot and trim around foot print to remove extra dough. Poke hole through the ornament to thread with string later.

5. Leave ornament somewhere warm to dry (like on your radiator), flipping occasionally. It took two days for us. (We didn't bake ours as is traditionally done because of the paint--but if you wanted to bake before you applied the footprint cook for approx. 2 hours at 250° F)

6. Once the ornament is dry thread a small string or ribbon through the hole and tie! 

Now, you might be thinking to yourself Christmas just ended, why post about this now?? Because you can make all sorts of things out of Salt Dough besides a Christmas ornament and it makes a really great activity for when you're housebound from snow or rain, especially since it uses materials almost everyone already has at home.

Your Turn: What's your favourite way of 

preserving special memories of your little one?