Baby Feet Heart Plaque

 

My favorite type of crafts are ones that I can use my children's handprints or foot prints in, like my Child and Parent Handprint Plaque Craft from a couple years ago. Now that I have a new baby and it's almost Valentines Day I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to do one of these crafts for the first time with my new baby and his big sister! This time though I decided to go with a foot print craft since I have not done one of those yet. This craft turned out to be so simple, besides the baking it only took about 10 minutes to do and I was able to involve my two year old in making them and she had a lot of fun!

Supplies:

• Salt
• Paint (any color(s) you want)
• Paint Brushes
• Flour
• Water
• Mixing Bowl
• Mod Podge
• Rolling Pin
• Heart Cut Outs (not pictured above)
• Ribbon (If you choose to hang up your plaque(s))
• Parchment Paper

And you will need at least one cutie and if you are as lucky as me than you have two cuties!

Directions:

1. Make the salt dough.

• 2 Cups Flour
• 2 Cups Salt
• 1 Cup Water

Mix the above ingredients together in your mixing bowl with your hands. Add more water if it is too dry, add more flour if it turns out to be too wet.

2. After making the dough if you are going to make more than one plaque than separate the dough into how many portions you will need. I was able to get enough dough for my one month old and my two year old with enough dough left over to make another small plaque. If you are planning on making more plaques than three small ones then you should make more dough.

3. Roll the dough out on parchment paper.

4. Print out a heart on a piece of printer paper and cut it out, making sure it will be big enough to fit the foot prints. Place it over the rolled out dough and cut out with a knife, pulling away the excess dough when done. (The above doesn't have the parchment paper because this was before I knew I should have used it in the first place because if you don't it is impossible to pick up the dough without ruining the heart shape it will be in.)

This is what it will look like.

5. Have your child step on the dough heart and push their toes and feet down so you can make sure you get a good imprint of their feet. Fill in any holes that may happen with some of your left over dough and rub down with water so the new dough will blend in. At this point you can also poke a hole into the dough with a straw so later you can hang it up with string.

6. Bake at 170 degrees for 2 hours on each side, I flipped them because the bottom was not drying.

When they are done drying in the oven they should look something like this.

7. Let cool and then apply a layer of mod podge.

8. Paint the plaque any color after the mod podge has dried.

9. After the paint has dried apply one more coat of mod podge. This will give the plaque a shiny look to it.

10. Let dry and you are done!

I love the way it turned out and I love that I have these great family keepsakes so when my kids keep growing and get way too big for being my babies I can look at these and be reminded that they are and always will be my babies no matter how big they get!

Happy Valentines Day!