A fixed idea in my wife’s mind was making a cast impression of our sons feet. This was a couple of years ago and she was shopping for the perfect kit. She had found one in a local mall, it even contained frames for the soon to be made pieces of art/history. What we did not take into account was that our son’s feet were to big for the frames and that the frames themselves were the selling point of the kit while the clay was just plain clay I suppose. Hopefully it was safe and tested for toxic chemicals… I mean it seams it was since my kid is still healthy 🙂
The mistakes we made
I believe I even remember the ball park price: around 30 dollars. Doesn’t seem that much when you imagine how beautiful it will look like. So that was our first mistake… spending so much money on an idea in our heads rather than on the product.
Our second mistake was leaving they clay out for too long when the casting did not work properly, since our son’s feet were too big (I swear he’s going to be 6ft 5 at least :D). I mean we tried casting his hand but you go and try to cast a one and a half year olds hand. Its almost impossible! The only way I see it remotely being done easily is if your kid is either heavily sedated or running a strong fever… it’s not ok to do the first thing and it’s not ok to cast your kid’s hand when he’s sick; just saying.
The third mistake was obviously not measuring the picture frames to see if his foot would fit in it :D, so let’s skip to the fourth blunder we made; in my opinion the most important one. We did not prep our boy for the casting procedure. He became nervous after a few attempts and probably so due to us also being nervous. We thought it would be easy and that it would turn out beautiful and everything was going to be hunky-dory.
Open the kit with your child and let it explore a bit, play with the clay… if at first you don’t succeed do not be alarmed. Just restart and remold the clay. We got our daughter’s hand on like the fifth try :). We were really lucky with the foot though and got it on the very first try.
The only problem I saw with the Feuchtmann Infant Art Body Impression that my wife bought (yes, it is a fixed idea) was that the white clay was by far superior to the pink and blue clay and turned out much better; I believe this is just due to the color. See for yourself:
The one in the middle takes the cake by a long-shot. Made with the Feuchtmann Infant Art Body Impression Kit
Everything else screams quality. Made in Germany with harmless, tested and certified materials. Smells nice and you get a few parts that you can keep for future clay play.
The bottom line
Just get normal regular clay… I’m serious.. this seems way to expensive to me. Completely unnecessary! Just get some normal clay for kids that can air dry. You can get a bucket of 2.5 pounds of clay for less than 5 dollars like for example the Crayola Air Dry Clay. Combined we spent over 40 dollars… maybe even close to 50 bucks for a nice picture frame and finally 3 pieces of art; you don’t need to!
Also, we did not bake our art works… we just left them to dry for a couple of days.
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