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The truth is that times are tough for everybody these days. Security of the home and family matters really should be a primary concern for anybody, especially for people who have children. With something as simple as baby footprint clipart, security can even be provided for the children. Additionally, family fun and entertainment can be had by families working together to create custom clip art using the baby’s footprint as the basis for that clipart work. When you are done, you will have truly unique, custom-made and totally free clip art – one that you’ll be proud of and admired by others.

Creating a Handy Rainbow Flower Clip Art
Some of the most popular forms of clipart created with these family imprint images are flowers. If you have created say some ‘handy’ clipart images already, then with six or seven cropped and reduced copies of a handprint placed in the shape of a circle, the graphic now becomes a clip art of a flower. If you had changed the color of each of those petal handprints, you would then have a rainbow flower clip art. Alternately, you can use a simple program like Paint in Windows. Just select the spray tin and paint a graffiti-like a hand, foot, smily face, match-stick man or anything.

Using Graphics and Clip Art for Learning Steps
Small, printed copies of the baby’s footprint can also be used throughout the home in order to create virtual foot paths for the baby to follow. Different colored footprints may lead to different areas of the home. These are not only helpful to the child but can also be an invaluable tool for teaching and education as well. Color differentiation, directions, left and right and many other things that the child must learn to comprehend can all be taught using the baby’s very own feet to guide the child along the way. At an older age, or perhaps for a sibling, it could be the guiding of a treasure trail. Later at your children’s party, they could form part of the fun - for different guests or teams at a children’s treasure hunt party.

If you want to add even more pizzazz to your efforts, try creating extra features with the addition of animal clip art or other such add-ons to your clipart works. The ‘Footprints in the Sand’ is a very popular work within the world of fine arts and has also become popular in its niche of clip art. This “masterpiece” can be recreated using the baby’s actual footprints in the finished artwork.

Mastering Simple Skills
When the subject is considered objectively, the artwork, the security, the teaching tools and many other factors combine to make creating your own baby’s footprint clipart to be something that you should not only consider, but actively pursue. Once you’ve learnt the few tricks involved, it’s a skill you can apply to a variety of future events be they business or at home – your grown up children’s shower party invites, christening invitations – and soon it’ll be for grandchildren’s parties!

Baby Footprint Poems can Graphically Express Your Heart Emotions
Creating your baby footprint poem does not have to be difficult. Scan your image of your baby’s feet, or get a photographic shop to do it for you and save it as a .jpeg or tiff file, which can be imported by graphics manipulating software.  You can download a free graphics package from the internet such as GIMP, which is a near-equivalent of Photoshop - and it’s open source! Then there are others: iMage, Image Enhance, ImageForge, Painter 25, etc. You might also find your standard Windows program, “Paint” (normally found under your program “Accessories”) of some use. Also, if you have the Microsoft Office pack, that normally includes a throw-in program called Picture Manager.

It’s not so difficult to learn how to manipulate images with any of these, cropping and editing your baby footprints picture to a useable size. Then, using your baby footprint image, create an eye-pleasing design which can be printed off on some beautiful paper and framed on your wall. This can be done either at home, or at a print shop near to you.

The footprints could be used as the main feature of your display, or you could miniaturize the image and use it as a border around a poem which expresses your feelings as a new parent, and which in future will remind you of the special occasion when you welcomed your new baby into the world.

These make excellent gifts for Grandparents, God Parents, Uncles, Aunts and other relatives and close friends.

If you have lost or misplaced your hospital footprint image, simply create another, using baby footprint kits readily available for purchase. Moldings, castings, impressions, prints, and photographs are also ways of capturing those little feet before they grow.

Feel free to use the following example poem to enhance your baby’s footprint in the image that you will create as your memory of baby’s early days.

Your little footprints will stay with us
Long after you’ve grown and gone
They will stir our fondest memories
Of the day that you were born
All our dreams were then completed
All our joys became fulfilled
All our prayers for you - dear child
Were answered when you arrived
For our part - you know we love you
And in time you’ll do the same
Now whenever we see these footprints
You’ll warm our hearts again

Change the Words and Make it Yours
You may like to change words around to tie into your feelings and memories. For instance, you can change “dear child” to your own baby’s name. Then the line might become
All our prayers for you - Josephina
or
All our prayers for you - dear Lucy

If you have handprints - change the footprints words! If born at night, change “day” to “night”.

With the shell of a poem already there, it’s so easy to start changing a word here, a line there - and then suddenly you’ve got a whole new poem - your own baby footprint poem!

(Some days later - 2009.03.22: )

So now we have created our mini series of these 3 posts to inspire and give some tips on creating baby footprint graphics and composing poems to combine into a family keepsake:
1.    Expressing Graphic Emotions For the Times
2.    Baby Footprint Poetry and Graphics Masterpieces
3.    Encapsulate Your Emotions in a Baby Footprint Poem (this post)

Creating your own baby footprint clipart is not something that many people first consider when discussing computer graphics or clip art. Free baby clipart is actually something that can be beneficial to people on many different levels. Baby clipart is a very popular subject online. Whether the baby clip art is being sold online or given away on free clipart websites, the fun in making as well as the benefits go well beyond money or art.

To create a genuine work of art using your baby’s footprint, some tools will be necessary. Paper, ink, a small paper plate, a scanner and a good graphics software program should all be readily available. Printer Ink can be used if you buy it in bulk and for this purpose, the paper plate should be used. If the baby’s foot is small enough, some ink pads may be available that are large enough to accommodate the baby’s foot. There are the popular imprint kits available if you need to simplify this step. Graphics programs like Picasa created by Google for Windows-based computer systems, and the more comprehensive GIMP (for both Linux and Windows based programs) are both free and have a very low learning curve. More advanced graphics programs are also readily available for a reasonable price – so you don’t have to hand over hundreds of dollars for the Adobe Photoshop – excellent though it is.

Paper to Foot
When the baby’s foot (or feet - also hand depending on the preferences of the person creating the imprint clipart) is inked up, probably the most practical next step is to bring the paper to the foot. You can carefully smooth out – almost gently stretch the foot and apply some degree of firm pressure to ensure a more thorough image without missing the foot arch and other hollows.

OR Foot to Paper?
The family fun way and more suitable for older infants is: the child should be helped to step on and walk across the paper (though numerous sheets of paper together may be advisable depending on the baby in question) and there should now be a complete selection of baby footprints to choose from. The creator then only need allow their mind to wander some, as if staring off into the clouds to see what their imagination may see. Just remember that if you drift off too long, you’ll likely find a lot of extra inky prints in places you weren’t wanting! So keep the camera or video to hand to snap and scoop up any extras!

Once the ink has had sufficient time to dry, place the paper containing the baby’s footprint onto the scanner and scan a copy. The graphics program can then be used to manipulate the picture, cropping, cutting and pasting as may be necessary for the free clip art that is to be created. The baby foot print clip art can then be manipulated so as to fit many different categories of clipart. In addition to all of this, a viable and legal record of the baby’s footprint is now in existence should anything untold ever happen to the child.

Can you recall your earliest memories?
How often are you not quite certain whether it is the actual event you remember, or just the photo of it? Yes - pictures, videos and images can hold the key to many a graphic memory - and all the more so as we enter the helter skelter of modern day living with its bombardment of fragmented audio-visual media clips. So…

Make and enjoy the artistic embellishment - the fun of playing around with graphics as a dual purpose, for:

- The Relaxation of Participating in Family Matters, Bonding Emotions and Family Values
whilst
- Creating Graphic Mnemonics, or should that be Mnemonic Graphics with Family and Baby Images, Imprints and Crafts.

Nurturing Our Family Environment
By far the most popular use that parents find for their very own baby’s footprint image is by combining it with a baby footprint poem. These two - picture and poetry - automatically bond to become a lasting keepsake that can be framed and displayed in a cabinet, on a shelf or your desk; it can also be hung on the wall. While it may grow dusty there, as do our memories with the passing of years zooming by, every so often you will catch a glimpse of the image - stop - and read the poem.

Floods of Joy Further Our Natural Family Bonding
Don’t be surprised to feel the seeping joy of your eyes growing misty and your heart warming as your memories are re-awaked and clarified again. Family life should contain refreshing moments like this as you feel yourself being transported back to the early days of your baby’s life on earth and the first flushes of parenthood. Dwell in those moments, allow the thoughts to brew and add more strength and flavor to your day.

Crafting  a Poem With Wispy Words While Surfing with Waves of Emotions

- First make the mood or atmosphere: - find a way to get back in touch with yourself. Now the simplest and best way of doing that is to relax and give yourself the time and space to do so. On another of my sites, I have a free relaxation recording that will help. Or you may just use your own inimitable and trusted way that works for you.  Once you’ve set your scene then
- Explore your emotions and let words or short sentences tumble out. Just start writing - it doesn’t matter what the words are at first because this is just splashing some sample colors of emotion to see which ones catch your eye.
- Start coming up with end words that rhyme - you don’t have to, but it can be fun and opens both sides of your brain - creative and logical. Once you get some lines down, you’ll most likely
- Get into a flow - so then just go with it and enjoy the space that you’re giving yourself.

I’m stopping there and will be posting more poetic pollo-mistics in a few days.

(Some days later - 2009.03.22: )

So now we have created our mini series of these 3 posts to inspire and give some tips on creating baby footprint graphics and composing poems to combine into a family keepsake:
1.    Expressing Graphic Emotions For the Times
2.    Baby Footprint Poetry and Graphics Masterpieces (this post)
3.    Encapsulate Your Emotions in a Baby Footprint Poem

Some hospitals still make and give you an ink footprint of your newly born, so…  When new baby comes home, wouldn’t it be nice to display the footprint images that come home too? You could also create a baby footprint poem to express all those bubbling emotions that often keep you alert for those first couple of days. Then, perhaps when all the excitement has died down, you may even have time to think of creating a baby footprint graphic or two to play around with; and make some simple and meaningful design as a memento of these always-to-be-remembered early days.

Casting Images in Cyber-Stone Makes More Memory-Sense
One thing to be aware of – with all your feelings, images and memories so vivid and fresh, the notion that these may slowly fade seem too unbelievable (Aaahh yes! – those timeless qualities of loving feelings!). Yet life ebbs away and every parent will slowly find the effects of time erasing - even re-writing the past! Some memories really are worth the effort to embed and occasionally refresh within your mind; - and maybe also within the household for all to see. It’s so easy nowadays to just display them in a baby footprint frame using a readily available kit pack.

Become an Amateur Photographer or Film Director for the Day!
Alternatively and equally importantly, just take lots of photos, especially videos of your new addition – those cute little hands and feet, curling fingers and toes that will grow so quickly, beautifully adorned with tiny ruby red nails. If you don’t have a video camera, you’ll probably be amazed to hear about
The Flip video - so small, so cheap, so neat,
with built in USB to plug straight to your computer - CNN reporters even use them! Anyway… More ideas:

- Try to get some snaps of the lines on the hand, especially if you haven’t made an ink or color handprint – you never know when you might be really grateful for that!
- Scan or load them to your computer and back up these precious images. You can so easily capture them and even
- Start adding a tiny foot or hand graphic to your email NOW – (proud parent that you are!); or LATER for family creativity and craft sessions using free graphics software readily available on the internet.

YES - WE PARENTS CAN TOO!

Baby Footprints Were Birth Records

Footprint images were originally always taken by the hospitals. They were used as a means of identifying your baby, since each child has their own unique set of footprints. These prints, be they of feet, hands (or fingers), encapsulate the essence of your child, one absolutely unique individual with his or her very own personality. It really is such a fulfilling image – it is right that we should be proud to keep and display such a special and graphic memory.

Although I already have covered these topics at some length elsewhere on this and related sites, over the next few days and weeks, I’ll be posting more on combining these two family creativity activities of
-        expressing and catching your emotions in poems, and
-        using baby imprint graphics to support and adorn your poetic puns

However puny you may think your efforts are likely to be now, with some simple graphic wizardry, we’ll soon craft a masterpiece of a family heirloom!
Maybe nothing to Barragg about, but, well, – YES WE CAN!

(Some days later - 2009.03.22: ) So now we have created our mini series of these 3 posts to inspire and give some tips on creating baby footprint graphics and composing poems to combine into a family keepsake:
1.    Expressing Graphic Emotions For the Times (this post)
2.    Baby Footprint Poetry and Graphics Masterpieces
3.    Encapsulate Your Emotions in a Baby Footprint Poem

We all love our pets. We enjoy them as puppies, watch them mature, and sadly, when they take leave of us at the end, we wish we had taken just one more photo of their puppy months or exuberant adolescent moments - some more videos, photos - even had a portrait painted by a local artist. One of the ways to creatively capture your pet’s memory for years to come is to make an impression of its paw. After all it was/is something you have seen often enough - too much on rainy days! - a sign you’ve come to recognize. It could be 2D on paper or 3D as an impression or cast.
Then you should always somehow get a record (a photo or through scanning) onto your computer. Such prints, images or graphics can so easily be incorporated into photo albums, scrap books and even hung on your wall, depending on how they are made. It’s also a great form of backup, should something happen to the original.

Ideas abound when one asks a young person how they would make a paw print of their dog, with the most common reply being: “First you got to doink it on its head so it stays still…”

Areas and Issues to Note and Beware
This very briefly summarizes points to remember when taking your pet paw impression:
- They do not understand what we are trying to do; so
- They may become frightened or unsure when we try and do something to them that they do not understand, and as a result:
- They wriggle! And maybe:
- They will whine or bark – even bite a little harder than their usual friendly chewing!
The solution is to find ways to take an impression while allowing your pet to do what comes naturally.

Some ideas that my children came up with:
- Dig a hole. Make some mud in it. Lay a long piece of paper on the other side of the hole, and stand at the far end of it from the dog. Someone holds the dog at the mud-hole end, and the other person crinkles a crisp packet, encouraging the dog to run through the mud, and across the paper, creating paw prints as they go! I could see that working on our dogs, actually - they’ll do almost anything for a crisp.
- Use powder paint and make a mix. Rub, tickle and stroke the dog’s tummy until its paws stick up in the air. Roll paint on its paw and quickly press a piece of paper against it. Yes, that would work - until the dog gets up and runs through the house…So be prepared for every possible eventuality!

The children do have the right idea though - if we can get the dog to act in a natural way, like walking through wet cement, or across some wet plaster of Paris, or in some sand and then take either a plaster of Paris or a latex impression - we are on a winning streak.

Other ideas that came up: scan your dog’s paw and print it off, photograph it while it’s on its back, make an impression using Pleistocene, Blue Tack, White Tack or salt dough. Take a rubbing (like a brass rubbing) of a paw imprint in some damp concrete.

Try and find new ways to immortalize your pet, and have fun while doing it.