Candy Corn Feet!

I probably do one footprint/handprint for every weekly lesson plan. They are just sooo cute and the kids are always so proud – “My feet my feet! I paint my feet!” I also like keeping one footprint craft from the beginning of the school year to compare to one at the end – such a cute memento for the parents!

Also in this post I’ll share my tested and true techniques for getting the perfect footprint!

For this Halloween themed footprint, you’ll need these three paint colors and some white paper/cardstock. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it for most footprints – if you can, you want to use cardstock. Not only will it keep longer because it is sturdy, but it won’t curl and warp like regular paper!

Here’s my first little trick for great footprints:

Take a sturdy book you can hold in one hand easily – I love kids Bibles for this – and put a piece of ticky-tack on the top and bottom.

Stick your paper on there and hold the book from underneath like so – this way you can bring the paper to the foot rather than trying to get the foot to the paper 😀 You have much better control and its so easy to position the footprint (or even press the foot a second time if you miss a toe or they do that thing where they curl their toes like crazy which puts a giant arch in their foot and you end up with nothing but a heel and toes lol)

Second footprint tip!

What makes footprints the hardest is how ticklish your kiddo is 😀 It’s so adorable how much they giggle and squirm…but I found myself at times like “ok ok help me out here” So I learned to “prime” their foot before I even start. I’ll give them a nice foot massage, rub my hands on their feet, pre-tickle them 😉 so that once I put paintbrush to foot it doesn’t tickle anymore! This has been incredibly helpful!

Ok – painting time!

Tip number three:

Start out with the white – when doing multiple colors always start with the color that can get painted over. Example: If you start with white and your kiddo suddenly squirms and white paint goes where white paint wasn’t supposed to go – no problem! When you go over it with the darker color it won’t show! Alternatively, if you start with orange and it goes into white paint territory, that’s going to be harder to cover up.

Next up: yellow! Toes can be the hardest especially if they have little squish toes that hide behind other toes <3 Do your best 😀 if you are using the book technique I showed above, it will be easy to press each piggy down individually.

Last up: orange! And I recommend leaving a little space between each color like I did here because when you press the foot down the colors will spread slightly – plus there’s always a chance of some wiggling and leaving that margin for error will help

Press away!

Last little tip – not even really a tip but just a way to make this even more fun for the kids:

After I’ve made the footprint, I tell them “It’s time for your pedicure!” I take them over to the sink and have them put their feet in. Then I give them a good foot rub and make it really dramatic and cheesy 😀 I mean, you have to wash their feet after, you might as well make it fun!

Once the footprint is dry you can cut it out – when you cut out things like this I recommend leaving a very thin border of white around the painting rather than trying to cut exactly on the paint line. No matter how many times I try, it always ends up looking cleaner if I leave the white border.

Now the next parts are really up to you – you can use the footprint any way you want. For this project, I like to use it as a kind of Halloween card for the parents, so I make a frame and add some fun wordart from PowerPoint.

I measure out and cut one inch from the width and height…

…and glue that to another color to make the frame.

In my Pumpkin Painting post, I list some VERY useful tips about gluing things like this. I highly recommend checking those out if you haven’t already 🙂