Baby handprints and footprints: when, how, how to keep

Until roughly five or six months, the grasp reflex is in charge: whatever touches the palm, the hand grips. It isn't defiance, and you won't win by prising the fingers open — the hand relaxes when you hold it by the wrist and run your thumb along the back of it from the wrist to the knuckles. The hand then opens by itself for the second you need for the print. A sleeping baby is the best collaborator, even if that's not quite the word.

A foot is easier, which is why it works more often with babies. Touching the sole does make the toes curl too, but the surface is bigger and it still prints even when the toes scrunch up: press the heel down first, then roll the sole onto the surface, and never push on the tips of the toes.

The hardest window is from about six months to eighteen months. Your child is on the move, grabs at the material and tastes whatever isn't being printed. Either put it off for a few months or plan on two adults — one holds and chats, the other does the print. After the age of three it becomes something you do together, and it's worth it: next to the newborn print, the new little hand becomes a measuring stick, not just another picture on the wall.

The difference between materials isn't how the print looks on the first evening, but what an ordinary home does to it: changing humidity, dust and grease from hands. The table runs from the longest-lasting flat prints to the relief ones.

Salt dough is the cheapest and least durable option, and that's exactly what makes it treacherous as a keepsake: it looks finished and only falls apart when no one can redo it — the hand has grown in the meantime.

The salt is to blame. It pulls water out of humid air, so dough that's as hard as a biscuit in dry weather gives way when the humid months come, swells and grows mould underneath. Varnish doesn't fix it, it just seals the problem in: moisture gets in through the untreated back and then has no way out under the varnish. If you do go with salt dough, keep it no thicker than a finger, dry it for a long time at a low temperature — hours in the oven with the door ajar rather than half an hour on high — and store it somewhere dry. Not in the attic, not in the cellar, not in the bathroom.

The second thing is safety. Salt at this concentration isn't food. A dog that pulls an ornament off a low branch of the tree swallows a dose of salt it would never come across on an ordinary day, and a toddler will put the dough in their mouth too — it's colourful, smells like baking and hangs low. So a dried ornament belongs out of reach and off the tree, judged by the same standard as toys for the very youngest.

A plaster cast is the only way to keep the real shape of a hand, fingernails and all. But it comes with a rule that often gets lost in online tutorials: a child's hand must never go into setting plaster. As plaster sets, it reacts with water and gives off heat; in a narrow cup closed around the fingers it gets hotter than you'd expect, and at the same time it hardens around the hand. A burn and a trapped hand are both real risks here.

The right way has two stages, and that's also why kits are sold the way they are. First you mix alginate — the seaweed-based impression material you know from the dentist. It sets within a few minutes in lukewarm water and stays flexible, so the hand slides out of it, fingers and all. Only then is plaster poured into this mould. The mould makes one cast, then it dries out and warps, so a second attempt means fresh alginate — which is why it pays to buy enough for two goes from the start.

The finished cast then takes a few more days to dry and stays soft: a fingernail will scratch it and it partly dissolves in water, so it never gets washed. Brush the dust off with a soft brush. Greasy hands turn it grey for good, and no amount of cleaning will bring it back.

The most common cause of a ruined print isn't clumsiness but rushing in the last three seconds. Doing things in this order fixes that.

Years later, what you regret isn't how the print looks, but that nobody wrote down whose it is and when it was made. In ten years you won't be able to tell two siblings' little hands apart. Write in pencil, on the back, straight away — and more than just the date: write down the circumstances, because those can't be worked out from a photo. The same rule applies to a dedication in a book: a specific detail lasts longer than a pretty sentence.

Storage matters more for how long it lasts than the material does. Not even well-fired ceramic survives in a bathroom — it just takes longer.

A print is one of a kind by nature. If it crumbles, there's nothing to make a second one from — the hand that made it no longer exists. That's exactly why it's worth having, alongside the physical keepsake, one more that can be made again: a photo, a full-size scan, a print from that scan.

The same thinking is behind a personalised book. It's made from a single uploaded photo, so the hero looks like that particular child, and the name is woven naturally into the story, because the text is written directly in your language. It's a one-off purchase with no subscription — and if anything happens to the paper, the source is still there. A print shows how small your child was; a book shows who they were back then. What's worth keeping from the first year, and what wears out before anyone notices, is covered in the article on keepsake gifts for a first birthday; how such a book is made is explained in a personalised book, step by step.