Here’s what we used: A clay pot large enough to fit child's growing feet on the side, some acrylic paint, a few old foam paintbrushes, a black Sharpie or black paint and a fine brush or a paint pen, and a matte spray-on clear coat.
Because of the potentially {very} messy nature of this project, we opted to do it outside with the garden hose and a pile of old rags nearby (and I’m thankful we did…things got MESSY despite my precautionary steps). To get started, I applied a thick layer of paint to child's foot. In our case, we used purple and green with a little bit of white in the middle, but you could obviously use any colours you like. One thing I would say is that if you want the colours to mix together where they meet, you should probably help them along with your paintbrush, while on the foot. I expected the mixing to sort of naturally happen when my daughters foot was pressed down on the pot, but it didn’t (not a lot, at least).
We carefully pressed one foot onto the pot, washed it off, then painted the other foot and pressed it on so that the two straight edges were in the middle (with a small space between them) and the two arched edges were pointing outwards.
After giving the footprints a few minutes to dry, I used the Sharpie to draw a very simple butterfly body and antennae in the centre. Then, we flipped the pot over and wrote a little message to remember who made the pot and when.
As a final step, I gave the butterfly part of the pot a light spray of matte sealant, just to make it a little more durable. Ten minutes later it was dry and we had an adorable personalized gift that was both easy and inexpensive to make.
April Showers bring May flowers was always the case growing up in the midwest. Hope you mamas enjoy.
Mindy Buckley