Sandy Hand Prints Make a Fun Beach Keepsake

Poppin's Book Nook is heading to the Beach for the month of July! There are lots of books about the beach, but one of my girls favorites is Ladybug Girl at the Beach. If you know much about Lulu (aka Ladybug Girl), you know she isn't scared of much, but on her first trip to the ocean, she was scared to get in. She has lots of fun on the beach with her dog, and finally when she braves the ocean as Ladybug Girls she realizes how fun it can be too!

We live no where near an ocean, but we do live near a lake with a beach! We headed out there equipped with a tub of plaster, a measuring cup, a stick to stir with, and lots of baby wipes to make some hand prints (I got the idea HERE)!

I figured the swimming area would be crowded during the hot summer day, so we chose to go to a quieter area of the beach. Obviously a lot of people with dogs had been down there too from all the tracks we found!

Using the water from the lake I mixed up our pottery plaster. (If you try this I would recommend taking another bowl to mix in; it was hard to mix all of it in the tub!)

Then I had each kid make foot and hand prints. I had to push down on their feet and hands to get deep enough imprints (which is why we are lacking pictures). After the prints were made we filled them up with plaster and waited.

Plaster poured into the prints in the sand

It took 30 minutes before we could dig out our plaster, so we explored the beach. We found a few shells, lots of rocks, and way too many dead crayfish (ick)!

We went back, and I started digging around on plaster prints and scooping them up with plenty of extra sand. Eli immediately stepped on his footprints and broke them both! A few of the other broke off fingers or toes (my guess is they weren't deep enough), but I have at least one complete print from each kid.

Remove plaster from sand to reveal your handprints

I left the extra sand around them for 24 hours before I rinsed them off with the hose.

Leave handprints to dry totally before removing sand

I figured by that point they were completely hardened! I took the hose and rinsed them off leaving only the sand that was embedded in the plaster.

Sand plaster sculptures from hand and foot prints

The hands seemed to work a little better then the feet to me as long as you got the fingers deep enough that they didn't break while digging them out. I was surprised more sand didn't stay. I bet if we had went to the swimming area with the nicer (less clay like) sand, more would have stuck. It is still nice to have some imprints of little hands and feet. This would also be a fun thing to do as a vacation memory!

Be sure to stop by and read all about the sandy fun all the Poppin's Book Nook Bloggers are having! Then next month we are living Happily Ever After with our Fairy Tale theme!