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I knew I wanted to do something for Nate after we got his good news but I was short on time in the middle of the week. I wanted to get him something meaningful from Landon – but what? Footprint art is just about the cutest thing ever and we had all of the supplies on hand, so we whipped this up really quick!This is extremely simple to make and I didn’t go to any great lengths to make the footprints symmetrical. I was in a bit of a hurry so it didn’t even occur to me to take progress photos of the process! But the steps are seriously easypeasy, my friends!
Here’s what you need:
-Canvas (Linked Here) (we had a large one on hand because I bought a pack like this for spur of the moment projects)
-Acrylic paint (Exact Set Linked Here)
-Paintbrushes (Exact Set Linked Here) – large and small for the details
-Wet paper towel
-Pencil
Step by Step:
Step 1- Set out all of your supplies and put your child in a high chair or bumbo seat – something to keep them contained. This is my best advice. They can’t run or crawl away with paint on their feet.
Step 2- Use a paintbrush to fully coat their little foot in paint. I only did one foot but if I had done both feet I would have only done one at a time for mess control. Landon giggled the whole time because his feet are so ticklish.
Step 3- Hold the canvas in one hand and their foot in the other and stamp it onto the canvas. I rocked the canvas side to side against his foot without moving it (in the same way you would rock your thumb against a surface to get a full thumbprint) to get it pressed on really well. If you find a gap in any of your footprints you can take a little bit of paint on your brush and fill that in. Repeat. Coat the foot in paint before each stamping.
Step 4- This probably goes without saying but have a wet paper towel or baby wipes handy to clean the paint off of their feet immediately. The paint came off very easily because we didn’t let it dry.
Step 5- Your footprints will have had time to dry by the time you are done cleaning off their feet, so grab your pencil and draw your details on! I lightly sketched the ladders, wheels, windows, sirens, and words. You want it just dark enough that you can see where it is to guide your painting. You could use a ruler and a bottle cap to trace for super perfect lines and wheels but I was moving pretty quickly, so it was all free hand!
Step 6- Paint on your details! You will need very small paint brushes for this part and a light hand. The smallest paint brushes in the set I linked above were perfect. Just fill in your pencil sketches! I started from top left so that my hand would not drag across any of the wet paint.
Step 7- Let dry!
That’s it! It turned out to be the perfect personalized gift to give Nate. He loved it! It would be extra cute if you had several children and you stamped all of their feet on a canvas this size. But I think ours turned out really well!
