You know what people coo over the most about my baby? Not her face, her smile, or her hair (really fuzz). It’s her feet. Sometimes this is when I have her in a wrap and that’s all they can see. But, other times they can see all of her, but they are still drawn to her tiny feet. So, I wanted a fun way to remember how small her hands and feet really are. When my older kids were playing with salt dough, I decided to try to make a baby footprint and handprint mold out of it. Then, I used the molds to make little crayons shaped like her feet and hands.
It took me several tries to figure out how to make it work, but I did eventually make some cute little crayons. Read on to learn my tips and tricks, so you can easily remember the size of those cute little hands and feet forever.
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How to Make Baby Footprint and Handprint Crayons
Materials:
- Salt Dough (salt, flour, water) – Learn how to make it here
- A baby 🙂
- Aluminum foil (the heavy duty stuff works best)
- Crayons (I just use old ones the older kids have beat up)
Making the Baby Footprint and Handprint Molds:
To start, you need to make your molds out of salt dough. If you haven’t made salt dough before, learn how to make it here. Once you have the dough, roll it into balls and flatten them. Then, take your baby and press their hand or foot into the mold. As you can tell by my picture, this is a two handed process and taking a picture at the same time doesn’t work well. Press their hand or foot in deep, but not all the way through the dough. Once you have all the prints that you want, wash your baby’s hands and feet off.
Then, cook your dough at 250°F. Check it every 30 minutes to see if it is fully dry and hard. Now you have your mold. The cool thing about this craft is now you have a mold that will last. So, if you don’t get around to making your crayons for a few months, you can still make them the size your baby was as a newborn. Or you can make more at a later time.
Molding the Crayons:
Now you can make your crayons. This is where some trial and error came into play.
First, you need to line your mold with aluminum foil. Two things I learned was to use heavy duty aluminum foil and to fold the edges up instead of down. Rub the foil into the mold to get as many details as possible. The heavy duty foil won’t tear as easily, but if you notice a tear, you should start with a new piece. When you get to the edge of your baby handprint or footprint, fold the foil upwards. This allows the crayon to be thicker. Then, place your molds on a cookie sheet covered in another piece of aluminum foil.
Next, chop up old crayons into small pieces and place them in the mold. I forgot to take a picture at this point, but you can see what this should look like for previous crayons I have made. Fill the aluminum foil past where the mold ends, since the crayon will sink when it melts. Finally, place the cookie sheet in the oven at 200°F for 20-25 minutes. Once all the crayon looks melted, they are ready to be taken out.
Final Touches:
Give the crayons time to cool once they are out of the oven. Once cool, the aluminum foil should just lift out of the salt dough mold. Then, gently pull the aluminum foil off the crayon. It should come off easily, but it is still a good idea to be careful.
My crayons came out with a clear imprint on them, but they had a bunch of extra crayon around the edges. So, I took a knife and cut off the extra. I should have done this while the crayons were a little warmer. I also should have been a bit more patient with my cutting. But, if you accidently chop off fingers like I did, use the tip of a hot glue gun to melt the crayon back together.
Conclusion of Making Baby Footprint and Handprint Crayons
I think that these baby footprint and handprint crayons are adorable. They were a little more nit picky to make than I expected, so you won’t see me mass producing them anytime soon. But, I love the resulting crayon keepsakes. And, now that I know how to make salt dough crayon molds, I will probably make more custom crayons. What crayon shapes do you think would be fun to make?
This isn’t the first (or probably last) time I have made crayons. Check out my other crayon creations here. And while baby crafts are hard to come up with (for some reason drool art isn’t popular), I do have a few more baby crafts you can check out.
