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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)