Our mothers circled our hands and feet in childhood, so that in the children's album there would be a memory of what we were. Already at school, we circled them ourselves and gave them to each other.
Today you can make an imprint of the child's hand and foot with every fold on the skin. And your Romeo will be able to give his Juliet in kindergarten not just a picture, but a three-dimensional copy of his pen. In our age, you won’t surprise anyone with photographs, videos are shot with a mobile phone, and casts of children’s arms and legs in 3D format are really exclusive, which cannot be bought, you can only order a master or make it yourself.
Godparents buy a gift certificate for this service so that an adult child will remember them with gratitude. Lovers (as in the "Avenue of Stars") and newlyweds order handprints on a stand with engraving. For the hero of the day, you can call a specialist at home, and organize a gift - a procedure as part of the holiday program.
Now it is fashionable to collect sculptural copies of the entire family and keep them as family heirlooms for posterity. Many people order accurate 3D sculptures of their hands.
Of course, such casts were invented a long time ago, but this service was expensive, and not everyone dared to take their crumbs across the city to the sculptor's workshop. Children grow rapidly, and I want to leave an extraordinary gift in memory of childhood. When your child becomes famous, these casts will be worth more than gold. Now many masters provide this service, but it is quite possible to manage on your own at home.
Children's casts. Method one - on the sand
Tools and materials
Step-by-step instruction
- Sand is poured into a bowl (without tamping).
- Carefully in the center we make an imprint of the handle or foot of the child.
- Along the edges we lay out the selected decor for prints.
- Dilute alabaster to the consistency of sour cream (preferably with cold water, as it seizes very quickly).
- In a thin stream, so as not to spoil the work, pour the solution onto the sand with a layer of 2 - 3 cm.
- After 15 minutes, when the alabaster is completely hardened, carefully remove it from the mold.
- > We clean it from sand with a brush and cover it with paint, varnish, apply a commemorative inscription.
Materials of casts of children's hands and feet are very diverse. We got used to the sand, you can experiment with plasticine.
Method two - plasticine
Tools and materials
- children's soft plasticine;
- gypsum;
- PVA glue;
- decor material.
Step-by-step instruction
Method three - in the test
Tools and materials
- wheat flour - 1 cup;
- fine salt - half a glass;
- vegetable oil or glue - 1 tbsp;
- paints;
- decor material.
Step-by-step instruction
For grandparents, this is the most desired gift that they will keep for a lifetime.
But no one canceled grandmother's fun and simple method - if there are hypoallergenic paints in the house, just give your child paper and paints - and you will have a lot of prints in five minutes.
If you have mastered simple methods from simple improvised materials, you can purchase a set for professionals.
Children grow up very quickly, and you need to have time to catch moments that will delight you all your life!
Sometimes it seems that children are growing too fast, parents do not have time to enjoy communication because of worries, and the thrill that they experience when looking at the small arms and legs of children slips away. I so want to leave something in an unreliable memory so that it reminds of a baby and demonstrates the miracle of a baby’s growth. Photographs and plaster casts of the palms help in part.
Photo Shutterstock
It is not difficult to make plaster casts, the only problem is that the kids are mobile, to force them to put their hand with the right force at the right time and not bring the baby to tears - this is really difficult. Little secrets come to the rescue.
Option one - economical
You will need: - soft plasticine, - oilcloth, - vaseline, - gypsum, - a glass of water.
Cover the table with oilcloth, otherwise you risk spending the rest of the day cleaning. From plasticine (take a couple of pieces at once), mold a cake with a thickness of at least 3 cm. It should be even and without holes. Apply a thick layer of petroleum jelly to one of the surfaces of the cake, you can even use petroleum jelly.
It is not necessary to use gypsum at all, the prints of the legs on plasticine look no less cute
In a bowl, dilute a bag of medical plaster (sold in pharmacies or by weight, or packaged in 150 grams), pour it into a glass and gradually pour in 200 ml of warm water. Stir constantly so that there are no lumps. Cover the glass with a lid.
Now send the finished plasticine to the microwave for 10-15 seconds, so it will become very soft and plastic. Check if the mass is too hot, if the baby will burn the hands.
Let the baby "drown" the handle or leg in the mass of plasticine. This must be done quickly and clearly, it is impossible for the child to have time to squeeze his fingers or twist his palm in a warm mass. Feel free to remove the pen, the plasticine should not stick, because there is a layer of Vaseline on it. For safety net, you can smear your baby's hand with a greasy baby cream.
Pour the prepared gypsum into the resulting recess and leave the mold for 2-3 hours. As soon as the plaster dries, you can remove the plasticine. Dry the gypsum for another day, now you can cut off the irregularities of the gypsum with sandpaper. Cover the cast with paint, acrylic or meat ones fit perfectly. It remains to be placed in a deep frame, you can even without glass.
Option two - home
Make molds from salt dough. Knead in a bowl 2 cups of flour with 1.5 cups of warm water, add 1 cup of fine salt. For softness and smoothness of the dough, you can squeeze half a tube of baby cream into it.
To make a trace of the arms or legs of your baby, that is, the first trace of the crumbs, you must read this instruction.
All materials that are intended for making casts do not cause any harm and cannot cause.
For their manufacture, a small amount is required, this will not disturb the child, because the technology by which the casts are made is innovative, and the composition from which the cast will be made is hypoallergenic.
Specialists have specially developed kits so that parents can create children's casts on their own.
Often, the parents of children purchased kits in stores, but there was not enough molding mass for a sufficient number of casts. But there are kits with which parents have several attempts before the real start. They train and begin to sculpt something really beautiful and neat. It turns out a quality cast. They can create it not only for themselves, but also as a gift to grandparents, godparents of their little one, make casts of children of close friends as a gift to them.
In addition to casts of the tiny limbs of your baby, you can create a cast of the hands of two lovers or newlyweds, a cast of your own hand.
Today, there is a great abundance of such things on sale, with the help of which it is easy to create your own design of casts. 
And on the Internet there are many samples for making casts.
If you want to put the resulting cast on a table or shelf, you need to fill a plastic mold, for example, from under sweets, with plaster, paint it with any paint, then glue the resulting cast of a leg or handle with good glue.
3d impression kits
Watch a video on how to properly create a cast:
Now let's take a closer look at this video: mix the dry gel in the required proportion, beat with a mixer until a homogeneous mass is formed, convenient for use. After that, we lower the child's leg into the mass, take it out. We fill the form with special plaster, after a while we take out the resulting sculpture.
Pretty not difficult, right?
And now let's dwell in more detail on the proportions by which you need to mix water with the impression gel.
Take 100 grams of dry gel, also 400 milliliters of water. Well, to create the hand of an adult, instead of a mayonnaise bucket, they take a two-liter bottle of plastic, cut off her throat. Take 250 grams of gel per liter of water.
For children whose age ranges from and older, it is necessary to calculate the proportions yourself. To do this, measure the amount of water required to completely immerse the child's arm or leg in the container.
In order to fill the form, take a special plaster. To pour one cast, take ten to five tablespoons of gypsum and 0.05 liters of water.
In order to pour one cast of an adult's hand, you will need 20 tablespoons of gypsum and 0.18 liters of water.
2d impression kits
We create a convex cast of any part of the tiny limbs of your baby.
This technology involves a plastic material for reusable use.
It is quite plastic and soft, able to convey every fold and line of the skin, keeps its shape perfectly.
But this material can be used almost unlimitedly.
The main condition for storage is the obligatory presence of the material in a jar, the absence of contact with water, talc and oil.
This kit will help you make casts of children's legs and arms every month. You will compare how the baby has grown.
And now the video instruction for creating impressions 2 d:
When analyzing this video, we want to clarify again that the convex layer of the handle is made using a finished impression mass by hand, filled with special plaster. Then everything dries up, the cast is pulled out, the mass is again kneaded. A new cast is created from it.
After this procedure, the impression mass is kneaded again, it is placed in a bag into which air will not enter, in order to take out the mass next time and create a sculpture again.
Casts can be painted in any color you like. This can be done using watercolor, gouache, acrylic. Glue what you got to the photo frame. At the same time, use any decor that you like, some collages, booties, a tag, a dummy, an ultrasound scan, a bodysuit, a vest, a cap. The main thing is to use your imagination.
Our children are the most precious thing in this world. Everything that is connected with the baby, I want to fix in my memory for a long time. This will help us imprint of salt dough, which is able to forever capture the hand or foot of a baby at a tender age. It will constantly remind you of hours and minutes dear to your heart. In addition, such a print will be an excellent gift for grandparents, and in the future it will be possible to demonstrate it to an already grown-up child.
Recipe number 1 - for simple crafts
- 200 g = (1 cup) flour
- 200 g \u003d (0.5 cup) salt (fine, not stone).
- 125 ml water
Please note that salt is heavier than flour, so they are the same in weight, and in terms of volume, salt takes about half as much.
For thin relief figures, add to your choice:
- 15-20 g (tablespoon) PVA glue or starch (tablespoon)
- wallpaper glue (previously mix it with a little water
Recipe number 2 - Strong dough for large products
- 200 g flour
- 400 g salt
- 125 ml water
Recipe number 3 - Dough for fine work
- 300 g flour
- 200 g salt
- 4 tbsp glycerin (available at the pharmacy)
- 2 tbsp glue for simple wallpaper + 125-150 ml of water pre-mix.
For kneading, it is better to use a mixer - this will simplify the task, and the dough will turn out better.
Universal recipe for salt dough
- 2 cups of flour (you can add dry starch to the flour without leaving the norm of two cups. For example, 1.5 cups of flour + 1/2 cup starch. With the addition of starch, the dough will become more elastic. Fine details are especially good from this dough e.g. flower petals);
- 1 glass of salt;
- 1 incomplete glass of water, approximately 180 g, you can add 2 tables. spoons of PVA glue. Instead of water, you can cook a starch paste.
Mix all ingredients.
Knead the dough until the mass becomes homogeneous and elastic, if the dough turns out to be watery, then you can knead it further, adding a little flour until it becomes elastic.
Water can be replaced with starch jelly, then the mass will be much more plastic.
Kissel is done like this:
Dissolve 1 tablespoon cornstarch in 1/2 cup cold water. Heat 1 cup of water in a small saucepan until boiling. Pour the starch solution into the boiling water, stirring. When the contents of the pan thicken and become transparent, turn off the heat. Let the jelly cool and pour it into the flour and salt mixture instead of water.
Salt Dough Coloring Methods
Salt dough can be tinted with food coloring, watercolor or gouache. You can also color while preparing the dough, introducing the dye during kneading, and already the finished product itself - on the surface.
An excellent chocolate color is obtained by adding cocoa. You can experiment with other natural dyes - soot, beet juice, carrots, ocher, etc. You can brown the salt dough product in the oven for a natural color.
When tinting, keep in mind that after drying, the color will become less saturated, but if you cover the craft with varnish, it will become brighter again.
What varnish can be used? Acrylic and artistic is very good. It is also possible to use a conventional water-based building material for breathable surfaces, i.e. for parquet or wood.
Features and methods of preparing puff pastry
There are a few things you can't do with salt dough. So, for example, you can’t add pancake flour (or flour with any other additives) to salted dough, since the figures will rise like good pie dough and crack when dried.
Also, you can not add iodized salt - large inclusions do not dissolve, subsequently the dough is not homogeneous - into a grain. Likewise, you can not add rock salt without first dissolving.
About water. In the test, it is best to use very cold water; be sure to add in parts of 50 ml after each addition, knead (due to the fact that different amounts of water may be needed for different flours).
Salt is first mixed with flour, and only then water is poured into the finished mass.
Salt dough is stored in a plastic bag or a tightly sealed container. It is better to take out salt dough from a plastic bag in small pieces, since lumps of dough quickly become covered with a crust and when rolled out or molded, these dry crusts spoil the look.
And one more thing: if the figures are thick (more than 7 mm), then after the first stage, you need to remove the excess dough from the back.
The dough may be too soft. Then proceed as follows: mix a tablespoon of flour with a tablespoon of salt at the bottom of a bowl. Press the ball of dough into this mixture and then knead it. Do this until the dough becomes more dense.
You can sculpt or cut out figures immediately on a baking sheet. The baking sheet should first be moistened with water, in which case bubbles will not form between the product and the surface of the baking sheet, therefore, the surface of the product will be even and stable.
Everything that falls off is just wonderful and, most importantly, it is not noticeably glued with PVA glue.
Swelling or crackling of salt dough crafts occurs in three cases:
1. If the flour is incorrectly selected. For greater strength, you can add rye flour to the dough (the color will be warmer and there should be no crackling, for example, a glass of ordinary + a glass of rye, 1 to 1); 50 gr. starch also give the dough elasticity and prevent cracking. You can also add PVA glue, since it also gives plasticity and prevents the dough from rising.
2. If drying is not done correctly.
3. If crackling occurs after painting, this means that the product is not completely dry (the product continues to dry and the air needs to go somewhere), so the surface of the paint or varnish is cracking. Do not rush to paint or varnish the product, so that later you do not regret and do not redo it.
How to dry salt dough
Drying is best in the air in natural conditions, but it takes a long time (complete drying can take a week or more, especially if the humidity during drying is high, as salt draws moisture), so you can dry it in the oven, following a few rules:
- The oven must be at the minimum temperature;
It’s good if drying comes with the oven lid ajar; - You can not put products in a hot oven immediately, heating should occur gradually. As well as pulling the product out of the oven, it is better if it cools down gradually instead of with the oven;
- It is ideal to dry in several stages: an hour dried on one side, turned the craft over, dries on the reverse side;
- The drying time of a salt dough product depends on the thickness of the product itself. And also from the applied manufacturing recipe. So, dough containing butter, cream, etc. dries much longer than dough without oil-containing additives;
- In order to avoid cracking of the product, it is possible to dry it in three to four stages, in the oven at the very minimum and always with the lid open for about an hour and a half, then a break for two or three hours, or all night, the craft dries itself, and then again turn on the oven to minimum with the lid open.
- With natural and oven drying, the craft must be rotated at each stage of drying, i.e. an hour dries with the front side, rests, at the next stage it is turned over and dries already with the reverse side.
Hello! I wanted to have casts of my son's legs and arms as a keepsake. In our city such a service is provided, but in my opinion it is too expensive. After wandering around the Internet, I decided that I could do it myself. I present to you the results of my labors. I will be glad if my material is useful to someone.
So, we need:
- photo frames (size and quantity depends on your idea)
- gypsum (regular or for artwork)
- plasticine (can be old)
- paints, including "metallic"
- varnish
- cardboard
- scissors, simple pencil, ruler, PVA glue
- glue (I have: moment super gel, in small tubes)
- sponge
- accessories for decoration (in my case, in a marine style - pebbles, shells, a boat, an anchor, a turtle).
I read about how to make casts at home here: http://www.chicco.com.ua/forum/sled-malysha-sdelaem-sami-t49618.html. The country also has such a master class
I took old plasticine from my eldest daughter, warmed it up in the microwave, made a cake (the hand or foot of the child should fit there), the height of the cake is at least three centimeters. Plasticine should be soft. We make an imprint of the part of the body that interests us)) The first time it may not work, do not despair! We crush, warm, make a cake and try again. In the end, you will achieve a result that satisfies you. When you make an imprint, the plasticine spreads on the sides, so before freezing, I carefully, so as not to spoil the shape, pressed the plasticine cake on the sides, the trace becomes a little more "slender" and deep. Then we put the plasticine in the freezer until it hardens.
In an art store, I bought this plaster for sculptural work.
When the plaster has hardened, you need to carefully remove the casts. To do this, I put the plasticine with casts from the oven to the lowest temperature so that it warms up and becomes soft, then it is easier to remove it. I dried the finished casts for another day, turning one side or the other. Otherwise, they remain damp, and we will attach them to the cardboard and it can become damp and soften from this.
While our casts harden and dry. Let's take a look at the frames. I have three of the simplest wooden frames, square, 13 cm. We disassemble, take out the back wall and glass. At the back there are metal plates that press the back wall, they need to be bent so that it turns out, as it were, the legs on which the frame is placed. So it will be more convenient to paint it.
Following the marine theme I had conceived, I painted the middle of the frames with white paint. I have this titanium white from the "Nevskaya Palitra". Bought at an art store. We cover with paint several times so that the tree does not shine through. Let's dry.
After the white paint had dried, I painted the inside and outside edges of the frames with blue paint now. I also painted over the sides of the frames. Painted the same several times. The blue paint I have is acrylic, all from the same art store, but was bought earlier for another job. Leave to dry (preferably overnight).
Now we need to work on deepening the framework. To do this, I used a very simple and understandable master class http://bond-mary.blogspot.com/2009/11/blog-post_16.html .
Since the frames turned out to be slightly different, I numbered each frame with a pencil on the reverse side. And I made boxes for them, which I also numbered accordingly. I made the box from ordinary white cardboard for children's creativity. I deepened it by 1.5 cm. Then I painted it with white paint (the same one I used to paint the frames). Then she took a foam rubber sponge, dipped it in blue paint and began to blot it over white. The folds and corners were deliberately left white. We leave to dry.
Now we need to color our casts. I chose this silver paint.
Before painting, I slightly corrected the casts with sandpaper. I made smoother edges, removed some irregularities, but this must be done carefully. The molds can break easily. I applied the paint in several layers until I achieved the result I wanted. And again left to dry. After the silver paint had dried, I varnished the casts and frames. Tip: DO NOT use water-based varnish, the paint on the frame can mix even if it dries well. I have again a varnish from an art store)). Leave the molds and frames to dry.
When everything is dry, you can start decorating. We glue the mold. And around it is your flight of fancy. Glue I used - moment super-gel, in small tubes, universal. Pebbles are a soil for an aquarium made of marble chips, bought at a pet store. I bought shells in different places, in the scrapbooking department, in the needlework department, gutted souvenirs from the sea))) The turtle is a pendant for the bracelet, also from the scrapbooking department.
Here's what happened with the cast of the leg. Anchor bought in the department for scrapbooking.
The middle frame, as planned, should be with a photograph of the son. I processed his photo in Photoshop in accordance with the marine theme))) The result is such a composition.
