Babies in their first year of life grow so fast that parents don't even have time to look back. But you really want to capture in your memory the moments when the baby is very small. The way out of the situation is casts of arms and legs. Buying a ready-made kit for their manufacture is now not difficult. However, the price of such kits is often surprising, and the creative components included in the composition seriously limit the imagination. How realistic is it to make casts of arms and legs with your own hands, using improvised means? It turns out that the procedure is quite simple, and only a few materials are required!
Plaster casts
How to make casts of arms and legs with your own hands using plaster? You need to take plasticine, you can even use old plasticine, heat it up in a microwave oven and form a cake so that a foot or palm print can fit on it. Then we make an imprint on the cake. If it doesn't work the first time, then you just need to reheat it.mass. To make the print clearer and deeper, when pressing, fix the edges of the cake so that they do not diverge to the sides.
It is convenient to use a certain form with sides for this. After obtaining an acceptable result, the cast is placed in a freezer to harden. We breed gypsum for sculptural works (can be purchased 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 irregularities. This should be done very carefully so as not to crumble the finished product. From above it is necessary to apply paint in several layers. The most popular options are bronze or metallic silver, but the choice of color is up to you. After drying, the casts of the arms and legs (by the way, made with your own hands) are ready! They can be placed in a deep frame, set on a stand or fit into the interior in any other way.
Alabaster casts
The second, no less budgetary way, with which you can make casts of arms and legs with your own hands, is to use alabaster as a base. It is necessary to mix five glasses of flour, two and a half glasses of fine s alt, a tube of baby cream,mix. Gradually add water, achieving the consistency of plasticine. We make cakes of the required shape and make prints of the feet and hands. The casts are placed in the oven and dried at a low temperature until hardened. Lubricate the prints with petroleum jelly and fill with diluted alabaster, leave to dry. After complete drying, carefully remove the casts from the mold using a nail file, file, other improvised means, give them a neat shape. After that, we cover the casts with paint of the desired color and let it dry.
We looked at two of the easiest ways to make casts of arms 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 range of products of the art store! It can be a beautiful frame in a marine style for a boy, decorated with pebbles and shells, a flower arrangement for a girl. Or you can even make a cast of the pen every month and by the end of the year make an unusual panel, which will clearly show how quickly the baby grew during this period.
