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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)

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

Just as the world seems permanently in a rush, so are we to get this up - even in its present slightly slim version. We will endeavor to match and align the blog looks (skin/theme, whatever) to our site theme in the near future, but am very content with the present looks, so maybe that can wait!

So, what have we got in store for you?

I’ll soon be publishing some novel styles of graphic, useable for any topic, but I’ll be showing them in the inimitable baby footprint genre graphic.

Also planned is an article on poems (re: newly borns - say no more!) to go and incorporate with any sort of invitation or occasion one might so wish.

But first something on Creating Animal Paw Prints and Impressions