Super-Sweet Deer Feet - House by Hoff

Every year we have our daughter make some footprint art and this year is was super sweet deer feet!

There are some things you can just count on every Christmas: hanging the stockings on the holiday mantel, presents under the tree, and the Hoffs making some footprint art to give to the Grandmas and Great-Grandmas. This sweet tradition continues this year, and we were excited to add some new (smaller feet) to the artwork this time. My sister had a baby last spring, so this Christmas we have a combination of Miss L’s big girl foot, and Baby Violet’s little feet!

Extra sweet, don’t you think? 🙂

Deer Feet Tutorial

Alright, to begin you need to round up the supplies. I bought a couple of new craft paints at Hobby Lobby. I was just eyeballing the colors, but here is exactly what I used: Warm White, Cinnamon, Camel, and Black. You will also need an 8″ x 8″ canvas and some paintbrushes of various sizes.

I used the larger paint brush to paint the bottom of Miss L’s foot with the Cinnamon color. (Please ignore the purple lip gloss, slime, and sweater-on-sweater outfit…I was needing some cooperation from this one, and I wasn’t about to pick any unnecessary battles with her…mmmmkay?)

After stamping her foot on the white canvas, I started using a medium-sized art brush to start filling in the footprint. I needed the footprint to resemble a deer’s body, so I couldn’t really leave the footprint the way it was.

Then I also added the deer’s neck, head, and legs. Also I used a small square-tipped brush for the legs, which definitely worked best to make the legs look long and skinny like a baby deer’s legs would look.

I found that the best way to add the little spots to the fawn’s back was to dip a pencil eraser into the white paint and just stamp it onto the deer.

Okay, so next came adding Baby Violet’s footprints. Which let me tell you, was no walk in the park. Notice the following things: 1) We have no pictures of this step. That is because it required all hands on deck to get her footprints on the canvas in the exact right spots. 2) We stamped her same foot twice. That’s because we were in survival mode (picture a teething nine-month old during witching-hour who didn’t feel good.)

In the moment it was just waaaaay easier to stamp that same foot on there twice, so that’s what we did. Because it was the easiest decision in the moment.

So, that’s that. 😉

After we survived getting Violet’s footprint on the canvas, we all had a beer. (This step is optional.) I painted the coloring of the deer’s face using my small square-tipped brush and the “Camel” paint color.