Halloween Footprint Craft: A Ghostly Keepsake for Kids!

This ghostly Halloween footprint craft is an easy, fun, & festive keepsake to make with your child this October!

You could even simplify this idea and use it at any preschool or classroom Halloween party too!

Halloween Footprint Craft: A Ghostly Keepsake!

I am a HUGE fan of personalized decor.

That’s what really makes a house a home and not some stuffy waiting room or lobby area.

Since this is our house, I want to decorate it with a collection of our life and memories.

Photographs, mementos, keepsakes, etc. that are special to us, even if no one else understands why we live in Alabama yet have pictures of a lobster and a horse hanging on our modern farmhouse gallery wall. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I especially love personalized decor for the holidays!

It’s so fun to pull out a tub of decorations year after year and rediscover little family treasures, like a gallery of all my kids’ Halloween costumes over the years, or a ‘First Trip to the Beach’ ornament.

Since I gave birth to my son last year, this desire for personalized keepsakes has been in overdrive, and I decided to create a little Halloween decoration that incorporates his cute little one-year-old footprints.

I am just in love with the ghostly little Halloween footprint craft we threw together, and here I’ll show you all the details of its creation!

The Halloween Footprint Giver

So here is the little lad whose footprints will be making this Halloween craft possible: Rowan!

This year will be his second Halloween but his first time trick-or-treating and getting the full All Hallow’s Eve experience.

It’s therefore going to be just as if not more special and memorable than his first holiday.

I mean, how adorable was this little four-month-old lobster last year?!

This year, he’s going as a biker babe in his Sons of Anarchy costume, complete with a hardcore pumpkin bucket makeover!

Halloween Footprint Craft Supplies

Here’s what I used to create this easy Halloween footprint craft with my son:

• Small board
• Black spray paint
• Glitter craft paint
• White craft paint
• Foam brush
• Silhouette Cameo
• Vinyl (five colors)
• Transfer paper
• Scraper tool
• Ribbon
• Hot glue

NOTE: You certainly don’t NEED to do something as fancy as this with a wooden board, spray paint, vinyl, and all that.

Some construction paper, craft paint, and a marker would still make the perfect Halloween footprint craft at any preschool or classroom party!

Painting The Board

I had a general idea in my head that I was going to turn Rowan’s footprints into ghosts and somehow incorporate the phrase “Trick or treat, smell my feet” in with it.

Beyond that was still TBD when I started, which is usually how I work.

Inspiration strikes and I figure out the details as I go!

I had purchased some 6″ x 8″ MDF boards about a year ago just to have on hand, so I pulled one out for this project since it is the perfect size for Rowan’s little tootsies.

I then covered both sides and all edges with some flat black spray paint.

Adding Some Glitter Paint

Since my spray paint was flat black, and because I wanted to make the board a little more Halloweeny, I applied a coat of glitter paint next to brighten the black up a bit.

I also used this glitter paint for my ‘Happy Halloween’ sign as well as for the cereal box signs on my pumpkin wreath and NFL ‘House Divided’ wreath.

It’s a clear gloss paint that has black, orange, and some green glitter in it, I am definitely getting my money’s worth out of it this fall!

Rowan’s Halloween Footprints

After the board was completely dry, I recruited the help of my husband to wrangle our squirmy toddler long enough to get his footprints…sorry, no action shots during this phase.

Since I was going to turn his prints into little ghosts, I grabbed some white acrylic craft paint and painted a light coat onto one of Rowan’s feet with a foam brush.

I then guided it onto the board and hoped that it would turn out.

This capturing of the footprints was definitely a two-person job (thanks for your help, honey!), and I had to encourage Rowan to uncurl his toes so the prints would resemble a foot and not just a random blob.

Luckily, it turned out great!

The Halloween Footprint Craft Design Mockup

Since my Silhouette Cameo is my most favorite crafting tool in the history of ever, I’d be using it to create the rest of the design elements in vinyl.

Hooray for no hand painting!

After Rowan’s little footprints had dried, I snapped a pic of the board and then uploaded it into Silhouette Studio so I could make a design mockup.

I’m a very visual person and need to actually SEE my design in the flesh instead of just in my head because it really helps me to determine the placement and colors of all the elements.

Here’s what I came up with:

Adding Registration Marks

To make my life a little easier and the layering of all the vinyl a little less stressful (hopefully at least), I added several pairs of registration marks.

These little boxes (I filled them in with yellow in my design just to make them easier to see) would be cut out above each line of text to help align the colored words overtop their white backgrounds.

You can read a more detailed description of what registration marks are and why they are so helpful when layering vinyl here.

Cutting The Vinyl

White Vinyl: Using my Silhouette Cameo, I first cut out all of the white vinyl pieces (the font backgrounds and speech bubble as well as their registration marks).

Orange Vinyl: Next came the orange vinyl words.

Green Vinyl: The same process was done for cutting the green vinyl.

Purple Vinyl: The purple vinyl got the same treatment.

Black Vinyl: The black vinyl cuts were the smallest and simplest ones, but they were the most finicky to cut!

I ended up losing the inner rings on the crazy set of eyes (the right pair) but I still like it just as well…although it kinda resembles Cookie Monster now. ;)

The Vinyl Cuts

Here you can see all of my vinyl pieces after they were cut with my Silhouette Cameo and the excess vinyl weeded (or removed).

A great thing about this project was that all the cuts were small, so I was able to use up a bunch of vinyl scraps left over from other projects.

Horray for frugal crafting!

Layering The Text: To layer the text, I just placed some transfer paper over top the colored vinyl pieces then lined up their registration marks above the white ones (once again, for a more detailed explanation, check this out).

After a quick rub with my scraper tool, my words were layered and beautiful.

Applying The Vinyl: Now that all of my vinyl pieces were ready for application, I started applying them onto the board.

I just pulled the vinyl off its backing with some transfer paper and once again used my scraper tool to adhere it solidly to the board.

I didn’t bother with any measurements or even the hinge method before placing the vinyl (ain’t nobody got time for that!), so I took a walk on the wild side and just eyeballed everything.

Our Completed Halloween Footprint Craft: Rowan’s Ghostly Tootsies

After all the vinyl was applied, I added some orange ribbon to the back for hanging, and Rowan’s Halloween footprint craft was complete!

Isn’t it just the cutest?!?

I just LOVE this!

It’s festive and cute and personalized.

This piece will make me smile year after year when I reminisce about my little boy’s first real Halloween and how tiny his feet used to be…

…and I’ll also probably be a little sad at how much he’s grown and the fact that he’s no longer my little baby (*sniffle*).

Ahhhh, how bittersweet motherhood is…

If You Enjoyed This…

Make sure you check out my Project Gallery for all of my other crafty creations, easy home improvement projects, and freebies, like these other festive Halloween ideas!

Thanks so much for stopping by!