Casting Your Baby's Hands

Emma Howard: Now, have you ever notice just how fast your little baby grows up so much that before you know it they are bringing home their first boyfriend or girlfriend. This one is now having a boyfriend. Well today on the Baby Channel we have the perfect solution to capture all the cuteness of your little baby's first weeks, Little Impressions make wonderful three dimensional plastic cuffs of your little one's hands and feet providing a lasting and original memento of your child's baby days. So not wanting to miss out, why would I? Scarlet my 7 week old daughter here is going to have her hands and feet cast by Tony Franks and Fiona North who are the founders of Little Impressions. Welcome to both of you. Tony Franks: Thank you. Emma Howard: Now I am hoping to catch her in a good mood. So I feel we should do this as soon as possible. First of all what is the end result show us Tony, you have got some examples here. Tony Franks: Here is a six week old, much the same age as Scarlet and we take an impression in the clay and then we cast it in plaster and then we frame into traditional method in an oak frame, so this is the end result. Emma Howard: Absolutely beautiful and you have been doing it now for 19 years Fiona since you cast your son's feet. Fiona North: I have. Emma Howard: And everyone has been copying you so we have got the original team here. Fiona North: Let's hope that. Emma Howard: Now I wanted to talk to you more about what you do, but I feel that we should capture the moment while she is fairly quite, not that I have a difficult child and show me what do we would. So, if you come right next to me and I shall follow your instructions. So I get down on the ground, do I? Fiona North: You need to be. Emma Howard: And we are going to do her hands. Fiona North: I am going to do her hands; I am going to do her left hand followed by her right hand. Emma Howard: Okay, so you take one of her -- should I move her clothes up? Fiona North: Yes. Emma Howard: Poor baby with a dummy. Good girl and you are going to press her hands down, there you go little one. You are pressing each finger down. She is not sure whether she likes this. Oh! There you go and I will take her hand out. You don't want to know what to get out of that, it is not something unlike to you. There you go, come on; you are going to look at these for years to come. Yes, you are good little girl, good girl, good girl. The other hand. Fiona North: Yeah. Emma Howard: Oh, it is not fun, is it? You must feel quite nice for them, doesn't. I think she is hungry that's the problem. It is not that you are hurting her; it is actually very soft, doesn't it? Fiona North: It is very soft. Emma Howard: There we go. Fiona North: Fantastic, well done. Emma Howard: Oh sweetheart, we did catch you with a bad blow, that's great, you sit down. I think I am going to hand her to somebody. Hand it to Barbara, there you go. There we are, right. So usually that's why they cry, sometimes they don't cry. And tell me how long does this take then to come back as a finished art sitting next to you? Fiona North: Well it can take probably a couple of weeks; it takes about a week to dry so about a couple of weeks before you get the finished article. Emma Howard: And you they are really popular, aren't they? I mean you have doing lots of different kinds of babies. Fiona North: Yes, well I have been doing them constantly for 18 years so I have seen many babies. Emma Howard: And lots of celebrities babies. Everyone wants to know about the celebrity babies. Which celebrity babies have you done? Can you tell us? Fiona North: Well I don't know if I can. Emma Howard: But you have certainly being a business that has gone from tiny beginnings literally and now Tony has come as your business partner. What difference have you made to this company? Tony Franks: Well when I discovered Fiona, Fiona had sort of been doing it from home sort of part-time around the children for several years and I discovered years ago, in fact this month in October it was and with my eldest daughter and I just saw them on a colleagues wall and fell in love with them and had to have them done and I remember saying to my wife at that time, this will be a fabulous thing if we are eager to do, you wouldn't have to go back to work and in those days we had showrooms in the Western London and we were in the fashion business and then busy lives we just forget about it until my second daughter came along and Eve is now five and half so we trace all the way back to clap as you have to do and it was at that point I asked Fiona if she would train my wife up and -- Emma Howard: And you put in the idea of a franchise into your head. Tony Franks: Yeah, that had been several times before and we teamed up and decided to try it as a franchise. Emma Howard: So now you can get this done all over the country. Tony Franks: Yeah, we have 31 out there now from Scotland through Wales and down at Courmayeur(ph), we have got about another six on the way. So we are growing organically around and trying to force it and it is generally young moms working from home, much like Fiona did working around their children. Emma Howard: And how much does it cost? That's what everyone want to know because this is beautifully done, it is kind of the creme de la creme of impressions, are they expensive? Fiona North: I don't think so. Emma Howard: No you wouldn't say that. Tell us how much would this particular hands and feet set cost? Fiona North: This one is a 120. Emma Howard: And if you just have the hands done or just have the feet done? Fiona North: The hands are 95. Tony Franks: And a single hand and foot much like this one that we showed earlier is 65. So that's a starting block. Emma Howard: And they are very beautiful actually, just Tony was saying, isn't it? You don't need to have the whole body. I am just going to ask you, are you ever asked to cast more than the hands and feet. Do people want unusual cast made? Tony Franks: Yes, sometimes very cheeky. Normally males come up to us at exhibitions and ask if we cast other things and that's part of the training in the franchise is how to deal with comments like that and send them away scouring embarrassing in many ways. Emma Howard: So really there is nothing that the woman -- they can't deal with, no comments. And do you think that something like this would be a phase that people will stop doing or do you think it is something people will always wanted to do? Fiona North: I think -- I thought the same thing. I thought they would just a flash in the pan fashionable thing, but 19 years later and they are hanging on hundreds and hundreds of walls and people still do want them and they are quite contemporary looking now, they are pretty timeless as something to look at. Emma Howard: Is there an ideal age that people should bring their babies to you. I have a friend who has a whole range of feet of all her children, they are all done at 4 months, is that an optimum age? Fiona North: I think 4 months is a good age. I think that Scarlet was probably a little bit too -- she was very little. They do tend to have little curled up hands and their little like that. I usually say from 12 weeks. Emma Howard: Because they are more cooperative. Fiona North: And they have discovered their hands by then and are happier to have them flattened out. Emma Howard: And the finished product, we are looking you always put them in an oak frame, but there you can have different color backings and things like that. Tony Franks: We have a choice of 9 different color backings; we can either wax this alignment. We use oak specifically, it is a very hard wood and a very difficult wood to work with, but we know and this is my daughter Lilly when she was six months old, when Lilly children this is going to be around and she will be able to hold her baby's hand up to her own as a baby and that I think is a timeless classic. That's what we aim to achieve. Emma Howard: Now that will make them coming to you rushing at their --. Also if there a family quirk as well you might see it repeated down the line, mind you. Is that the family quirk? Tony Franks: This is a family quirk and we recently did with both girls and their cousin Sebastian and Sebastian has this slightly parted -- Emma Howard: I think that's a nice thing. So it really does make it you feel as of a clan, doesn't it? And there is the evidence. Well thank you both very much for coming in to show and people who want to know where they can go who are living in Scarborough and who are living down in Port Smith they can just ring up their local franchise. Tony Franks: There is two ways; we have a call center with a free phone number which is 0800-019-3950. Emma Howard: We will have that number for them. Tony Franks: Or you can go on the website and you can put a postcode in and it will direct you to the nearest franchise. Emma Howard: So no more trace into your kitchen. Fiona North: Indeed. Emma Howard: They can go all over the country. Tony and Fiona thank you both very much you two. Tony Franks: Thank you.