Time does not stand still, so it is important to remember every little thing about such an important thing as the childhood of your beloved baby. Many parents have a tradition of making hand or foot prints of their children. But all the old methods are already outdated: for them you had to prepare a solution yourself, which was not always successful, and the quality of such products left much to be desired. Over time, they began to crumble and burst.
Of course, there are special workshops that are ready to help you. Such services are very expensive and are only available in large cities.
But in the modern world everything is simpler. There is a wonderful alternative to all methods: now you can make impressions using a special children's kit without leaving home.
What is the kit?
The cast frame is the first set you can create together with your child, which allows you to preserve the memories of tiny hands and feet for a long time. The set consists of modeling paste, an original panel for pleasant wishes, satin and adhesive ribbons.
The set is for children, therefore it is presented in two versions with a unique design:
- for girls - in pink;
- for a boy - in blue.
It is important that the use of a special set is completely safe for health, since the composition does not contain harmful components for the skin. The set will be an unusual and stylish gift with which you will surprise people. Such things are still new and not everyone knows about them. Don't be afraid to make original surprises. For example, both for parents for the birth of a child, and for grandparents for the baby’s first little anniversary. This decoration for a children's room will be an excellent addition to the interior.
To make a cast frame, you do not need to have any experience, sculptor abilities, or attend special courses. It is enough to carefully read the instructions, which are indicated in detail on the set.
Mode of application
The modeling mass is completely ready for use; for convenience, you should knead it with your hands for 30 seconds and roll out a layer 2 cm thick. All that remains is to attach the baby’s tiny hand or foot. For a successful result, there is no need to rush, however, you should remember that the mass dries quite quickly in the air.
To create a hand cast, you need to do the following:
- Press your palm against the material to create a uniform outline. But not too much, remain calm and patient, even if the child is mischievous. Don’t be alarmed if you didn’t manage to make a pen cast the first time: you can knead the mass again and repeat the creative process.
- Next, you should leave the mass in the open air until it hardens completely (this will take no more than an hour); if desired, the resulting panel can be painted when everything is dry.
- After sculpting, you just need to wipe your hands with a damp cloth. The mass does not leave marks or unpleasant sensations on the skin, so there is no reason to worry about the baby’s health.
Making a cast of the leg will require a little more effort:
- This will require 2 people if the baby is still very small and cannot stand on his own. Ask to lift the child and carefully, holding his lower leg with your hand, lower him onto the modeling mixture.
- Make sure that the child does not move his leg. If necessary, adjust the contours with your fingers.
- Next, wipe the skin with a napkin and wait until the material dries completely. All that remains is to insert the cast of the leg into the frame from the kit.
Benefits of the set
Compared to a number of its analogues, this product has the following advantages:
- it does not require diluting the solution, dirtying the house and exposing the baby to harmful components that are part of building materials;
- no special skills required;
- a hand or foot print is ready in seconds;
- there is no need to buy additional parts - the set already has everything;
- value for money.
How to successfully make a cast?
In order for the cast of an arm or leg to turn out the way you want the first time, you need to perform some steps:
- Take care of your baby's calm state and mood. Prepare a toy or an interesting cartoon to distract him if he doesn’t want to. But it happens that your fidget flatly refuses to participate in creativity. Just try to do it in a playful way or when he is sleeping. Castings of the whole family would also be a good idea.
- Make this a fun activity to make a tradition of making these memory frames as your baby gets older, such as during the first month of life and on the first birthday. Then, after a few years, the grown-up baby will study them with interest. And you will be surprised how yesterday’s baby managed to grow.
The set includes a special panel for wishes. Ask close family and friends to leave some sweet wishes for the future. Over time, it will be a pleasure to re-read them when gathering with your family. The panel has special holes for ribbons, so it will not be difficult to hang it on the wall.
Little children grow up quickly, and you want to capture their tiny fingers and legs in your memory. Casts of arms and legs made by parents can become quite tangible things. The manufacturing process is very simple, the materials are available, and the result will delight you for many years.
You will need:
- flour;
- salt;
- water;
- plaster or alabaster;
- spray paint;
- picture frame;
- liquid Nails;
- photo of a child, decorations.
The considered option allows you to make casts of arms and legs using available materials. To obtain volumetric impressions, you can purchase ready-made kits with gel filler.
Babies in their first year of life grow so quickly that parents don’t even have time to look back. But you really want to capture in your memory the moments when the baby is very small. The way out of the situation is casts of arms and legs. Buying a ready-made kit for making them is now not particularly difficult.
However, the price of such kits often raises eyebrows, and the included creative components seriously limit your imagination. How realistic is it to make casts of arms and legs with your own hands, using improvised means? It turns out that the procedure is quite simple, and you only need a few materials!
Plaster casts
How to make casts of arms and legs with your own hands using plaster? You need to take plasticine, you can even use old one, heat it in the microwave and form a cake so that your foot or palm print fits on it.
Then we make an imprint on the cake. If it doesn’t work out the first time, then you just have to reheat the mass. To make the impression clearer and deeper, when pressing, you should fix the edges of the cake so that they do not diverge to the sides.
It is convenient to use some form with sides for this. After obtaining an acceptable result, the impression is placed in the freezer to harden. We dilute plaster for sculpture work (can be purchased at an art store) in accordance with the instructions and additionally add a little PVA glue, pour the resulting mass into cakes with impressions, and leave for some time to harden.
When the plaster hardens, carefully clean the resulting casts from plasticine and leave for about a day for final drying. Then you should lightly walk over them with sandpaper, removing roughness and unevenness. This should be done especially carefully so as not to crumble the finished product. It is necessary to apply paint on top in several layers.
The most popular options are bronze or metallic silver, but the choice of color is up to you. After drying, the casts of the arms and legs (made with your own hands, by the way) are ready! They can be placed in a deep frame, mounted on a stand, or fit into the interior in any other way.
Alabaster casts
The second, no less budget-friendly way to make casts of arms and legs with your own hands is to use alabaster as a base. You need to mix five glasses of flour, two and a half glasses of fine salt, a tube of baby cream, mix. Gradually add water, achieving the consistency of plasticine.
We make cakes of the required shape and make prints of feet and palms. Place the casts in the oven and dry at low temperature until hardened. Lubricate the prints with Vaseline and fill them with diluted alabaster and leave to dry.
After complete drying, carefully remove the casts from the mold using a nail file, file, or other improvised means, and give them a neat shape. After this, we cover the casts with paint of the desired color and let it dry.
We looked at the two simplest ways to make casts of arms and legs with your own hands. As you can see, this is quite simple and accessible to parents. And the possibilities for further decoration are limited only by the range of products in the art store!
This could be a beautiful frame in a marine style for a boy, decorated with pebbles and shells, or a floral design for a girl. Or you can even make a cast of the hand every month and, by the end of the year, create an unusual panel on which you can clearly see how quickly the baby grew during this period.
Children's casts made from puff pastry
This method is considered the cheapest, but you should immediately take into account that the material is short-lived. The dough may crumble after just a few months, and high humidity in the room will ruin it even faster. Of course, you can extend the life of the impression by covering it with varnish, but it will still only last you a few years longer.
Making casts from plaster
You can immortalize your baby's hand and foot in the form of a cast using regular plaster, as in the photo. But this method is not ideal either. For example, if your baby suffers from allergies, you cannot use regular building plaster. In addition, the casts turn out to be too bulky and heavy, and there is simply nowhere to put them later. However, we’ll tell you how to make it yourself.
First, dilute the plaster with water as indicated in the instructions. Take a mold (for example, a round cup or small saucepan), cover it with cling film and pour in the plaster.
When the mixture begins to harden, make an imprint. It is better to lubricate the baby’s foot or hand with rich cream or sunflower oil in advance. When the cast has completely hardened, you can easily remove the handle from the mold.
Plastic casts of children's hands and feet
This is the most progressive method that will help you make a cast of a child’s hand and foot at home.
First you need to make “rough” prints from salt dough. Some recommend making them from plastic, but this material has a rather unpleasant odor and a hard consistency, so it is unknown how your baby will react to them. PICTURE 5
The salt dough print should be thoroughly greased with oil. Take the plastic, crush it into a thin plate and fill all the holes so that it exactly repeats the shape of a child's hand or foot.
When the mixture has hardened a little, it can be removed and cleaned of excess dough with a cotton swab. Cut out the cast and leave it to cool somewhere on the windowsill.
Now there are even special kits on sale that help you make impressions with your own hands. They immediately provide the container and mixture for the imprint. Therefore, if for some reason you do not trust the methods we propose, you can use the set and make yourself an excellent keepsake.
Video on how to make casts of arms and legs with your own hands
Life flows, children grow up, mothers and fathers set them free, but only touching memories remain in the soul of how small they were... Parents try in every way to capture their children: they take photos, videos. We offer another interesting way - to make casts of the baby's arms and legs.
Time is so fleeting... It would seem that not so long ago children learned to walk, and today young grandparents are looking at photo albums and souvenirs related to the childhood of their grandchildren's parents. More and more generations are brought up on such memorabilia. Family stories supported by “physical evidence” are always much more valuable than those that have nothing to attach to them. One of the cute “proofs” that mom and dad, it turns out, were little too, can be handmade panels with casts of arms and legs. There are several ways you can make casts of your baby’s arms and legs with your own hands, and we’ll tell you about the most accessible ones.
How to make a cast of a baby's hand and foot print?
Sand cast of arms/legs
We will tell you about the simplest method, which can be easily handled by a mother who does not know the art of sculpture. The cast can then be decorated with buttons, shells and chains.
Useful for creativity:
- fine sand;
- biscuit tin;
- alabaster;
- brush.
How to do it?
1. Sand is poured into a box and leveled. The child's imprint is made in the center.
2. Next, the alabaster powder is diluted very quickly with water to the consistency of thick sour cream.
3. It is poured into the cast in a thin stream. The thickness of the material above the sand is from 2 to 4 cm.
4. Leave the container for 20 minutes or more, take out the cast and clean off the grains of sand with a brush. Then you can start decorating the cast.
Decorative panel "Casts of the handle of the leg" from auxiliary materials
- We make salt dough from half a glass of salt and a glass of water, add enough flour to make an elastic dough. To prevent it from sticking to the arms and legs, you need to knead it and let it stand for a while. If desired, you can grease the palms and soles of the legs with vegetable oil, but with a well-kneaded dough you can do without it.
- If the baby is only a few months old, he may pull his oiled hands into his eyes and may involuntarily wipe them on his mother’s clothes. It is not always possible to make impressions when the child is sleeping, because the arm will need to be pressed, and it is generally better to make the leg while standing for good pressure. After all, all the lines of fate must be imprinted!
3. Don't think that we made too much dough, because it needs to be divided into 4 equal parts to take prints from two arms and two legs. Gently press the baby’s dry hand or foot into the resulting thick cakes. If the drawing cannot be made clear, you can crumple the dough and repeat the procedure again.
4. Before taking prints, select suitable containers or boards for the pieces of dough, because dough impressions are only the first stage of work. You could leave them, but after a few months the dough will lose its shape.
5. We got four cakes with indentations in the form of feet and hands.
6. Now you can dilute dry plaster or alabaster to the consistency of thick sour cream. Stir them thoroughly so that there are no air bubbles or unstirred clots. Do not forget that alabaster hardens very quickly, you need to work with it extremely quickly, with gypsum you can work more slowly. Pour the resulting solution into the recesses to their edges and leave until completely dry. After this, we clean the casts from the dough, preserving the structure of the imprinted skin.
7. It is best to paint with gold or bronze from spray bottles. These materials highlight texture much better than other paints and will look great on your panel.
8. On a prepared rectangle or square of thick cardboard, we glue the resulting casts, a photo of the baby, either with a special gun with glue, or with liquid nails; around you can put an ornament of buttons, pieces of plastic, feathers and other beautiful little things. And we insert the casts into the frame.
Some people use plastic instead of salt dough, others buy special kits for making impressions, but the dough inspires more confidence because it is environmentally friendly.
Dough casts of arms and legs - video
Homemade ceramics "Hand-leg casts"
- Instead of dough, you can use wet sand. But to do this you need to find good, clean, fine sand or thoroughly rinse the existing one. Then pour it into the selected container.
- Let's say you have chosen a round or oval container, in the center of which the baby's leg can easily fit, and along the edges you can place shells, circles, a chain, beads - everything that can be imprinted beautifully and in relief on the wet sand. The entire resulting composition will need to be filled with the same alabaster or plaster, and when everything is dry, the surface must be cleaned of sand and painted.
3. You won’t need to stick anything onto the cardboard, but you will have to select a frame to match the formed round or oval plaster panel. However, if you immediately decide on a beautiful and neat container and do not take anything out of it, its edges can serve as a frame, only a hole in the upper segment will have to be drilled in advance so that the head of the screw on which you will hang the decoration fits into it.
4. A more logical material here might be clay rather than gypsum. And you will get an excellent ceramic disc. All that remains is to figure out where and how to burn it. But this is for those who have experience working with clay.
Ideas - baby prints
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