For the people who know me know that I love doing crafts with my son and I love to do DIY projects with him. This year, my son goes to a play group where they do seasonal crafts so I do not have to do anything too big with him on my own this year.
When it came to decorating our house this holiday season, I was able to remember an easy craft I did with my son last Christmas. This craft was fun, quick, easy, and also turned out to be something that will become a keepsake. While this was a craft, it can also double as a cute decoration to put up for the Christmas season.
Now you might be asking yourself, “what even is this craft, just get to the point”! Well if I had to give this project a name I would call it: Rudolph footprint. Sounds kind of strange, right? Well it’s actually not as strange as you might think and is absolutely adorable! The best part is any child no matter what age, can make one (depending on the age they will need some help from mom or dad).
You only need a few things to make this project.
- a surface for the footprint: paper of any sort, a small piece of wood, white plate, etc…
- sand paper (if using wood to smooth the surface)
- a small paint brush
- brown paint
- white and black paint (very small quantity) for the antlers and eyes
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- you can use googlie eyes instead of paint for the eyes if you want
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- for the black and white paint we actually used acrylic paint pens
- red paint (small amount again) or a small red pompom
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- we also used an acrylic paint pen for the red nose
- 2 small branchy twigs (optional)
- glue for the googlie eyes, red pompom, and twigs
To get started you need to decide what you want to put the footprint on. It can be a piece of regular paper, heavy duty paper, a small piece of wood, or a solid white plate. The possibilities are endless. We chose to put the footprint on a small piece of wood (if you use wood make sure its nice and smooth and we also painted the wood). Next, you need your child’s foot. Yes, their foot. Then, you should put your brown paint on the bottom of their foot, or if they are old enough and mature enough allow them to paint the bottom of their foot on their own. We used brown paint because reindeer are brown. I would assume any paint will do, but we used a craft paint. Finally stamp their foot onto the surface you want the footprint on. This is where mom or dad (or even both) might need to help the child because getting a one year old to do this on their own is impossible. You will want the toes facing the top of the surface or pointing up, and their heel pointing towards the bottom of the surface.
At this point the hard part is over. Let the paint dry then decorate! what you’ll need next will vary depending on how you want to decorate it. Once it’s dry, paint or put the eyes under the toes and put the nose or pom pom on the very bottom of the heel (for even more of a Rudolph effect, use a sparkly pompom or use red glitter over the paint). Then paint the antlers or place the twigs coming out of the side of the foot. These should still be below the toes but above the eyes. And thats it! Let it dry and you should have a reindeer footprint.
Then from this point (once it’s all dry) you could paint a layer of Mod Podge over the paper or wood, cut the footprint out and make it into an ornament, or spray/paint a clear layer over the plate to make sure the paint stays and is safe to eat off of! I believe that Krylon and Mod Podge make a paint or spray or shellac that would work that you can find at a craft store.
We felt that this was slightly underwhelming looking so we added some snowflake stickers for that extra something
And the finished product! (We had to paint the last four toes on because like I said it’s very difficult to get a one year old to cooperate when making the footprint).
I hope you enjoyed this craft and will try it with your littles! It might be fun to do for a few years to see the growth as well. Let me know how it works for you if you try it.
My Mom Life 