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Tuesday 3 May 2011

Baby hand mould

Anyone who has had children will tell you they grow far to quickly, before you even know it you are looking at baby photos without the faintest memory that they could have ever been so small.

We visited my Mum at the weekend and she gave us a special present, a baby hand mould kit. Well I say kit, it was actually just the ingredients  Alginate and plaster of paris. Ours had been given to my Mum by a friend who had it left over after commissioning some work from the police making rubber cadavers for use in training exercises ( I have seen them by the way - bloated and rotten corpse of overweight man found in water was my favourite)

Anyway, we made a couple of hand moulds from baby jasper who is 10 weeks old (already!!)


First step make a container, cut the top off a bottle, split it down both sides and cover with tape, also tape over the rough top edge.
Next mix the Alginate  (a very light blue powder) 1:1 by volume with luke warm water and mix
Next step, swear a bit when you realise you have faffed about too long and the Alginate has set into a solid rubber chunk


Try again, this time directly in the (leaky) pot and mix quickly with a fork

 Stick babys hand in (Alginate is nice and gentle so you don't need any clingfilm or vaseline) try to hold still fort three minutes and get a blury shot of crying baby. Next gently pull arm out with a satisfying slurp, have a look in mould at little finger holes.

Mix plaster of paris 1:1 warm water and pour into the mould

When the plaster is hard the fun starts, peeling off the alginate



The next bit is almost to exciting for words, you don't have any idea what you are going to get so as the little hand is uncovered it is almost like seeing you nnew baby for the first time

Taa daa -  a perfect tiny fist, a memory for ever.

By now Jasper had fallen back asleep so we had another go and got another shape



Disaster the hand has snapped off at the wrist




The index finger fell of thsi one as well, but we fixed it with glue

You can get Alginate on eBay - we used about 150g for each hand.

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