Toddlers in their first year of life grow so fast that their parents do not even have time to look around. But you really want to capture the moments when the baby is very small. The way out of the situation is casts of arms and legs. Buy a ready-made kit for their manufacture is now not difficult. However, the price of such sets is often surprising, and the components included for creativity seriously limit imagination. How realistic is it to make casts of handles and legs with your own hands, using improvised means? It turns out that the procedure is quite simple, and even a little material will be required!
Plaster casts
How to make casts of pens and legs with your own hands using plaster? You need to take clay, you can even old, heat it in a microwave and form a cake so that it imprints a foot or palm. Then we make an imprint on the tortilla. If the first time fails, then it is only necessary to re-heat the mass. To print more clearly and deeper, when pressed, the edges of the cake should be fixed so that they do not diverge to the sides.
It is convenient to use some form with sides for this. After obtaining an acceptable result, the mold is placed in the freezer for solidification. We grow gypsum for sculptural work (available at an art store) in accordance with the instructions and additionally add a little PVA glue, pour the resulting mass into cakes with prints, leave for a while to harden. When the gypsum hardens, the resulting casts are carefully cleaned of plasticine and left for about a day for final drying. Then you should lightly walk on them with sandpaper, removing roughness and unevenness. This should be done very carefully so as not to crush the finished product. From above it is necessary to apply paint in several layers. The most popular options are bronze or silver metallic, but the choice of color is up to you. After drying, the casts of the handles and legs (with their own hands, by the way, made) are ready! They can be placed in a deep frame, installed on a stand, or in any other way fit into the interior.
Alabaster Casts
The second, no less budgetary way with which you can make casts of pens and legs with your own hands is to use alabaster as the basis. It is necessary to mix five glasses of flour, two and a half glasses of fine salt, a tube of baby cream, mix. Gradually add water, achieving a plasticine consistency. We make the cakes of the necessary shape and make prints of the feet and hands. Casts are placed in the oven and dried at a low temperature until solidified. Lubricate the prints with petroleum jelly and fill with diluted alabaster, leave to dry. After complete drying, carefully remove the molds from the mold using a nail file, file, other improvised tools, give them a neat shape. After this, the molds are covered with the paint of the desired color and allowed to dry.
We examined the two simplest ways how to make molds of handles and legs with your own hands. As you can see, it is quite simple and accessible to parents. And the possibilities of further decoration are limited only by the assortment of products of the art store! It can be a beautiful frame in a marine style for a boy, decorated with pebbles and shells, flower decoration for a girl. And you can even make a pen’s impression every month and by the end of the year draw up an unusual panel, on which you can clearly see how quickly the baby grew in this period.