Placenta Prints 🎨

I get questions about how to do placenta prints quite often so…….here goes!

Once your placenta is born, chill, you have plenty of time to do a print. It would be a shame to stress in the immediate postnatal hour or two or three, you can chill placenta in fridge event until the next day or so to crack on with it

There are a few things you might need:

🩸a placenta

🩸some sturdy paper, A3ish, probably….I like good quality watercolour paper.

🩸an absorbent surface to put the placenta on in preparation for the print, perhaps a towel, or an inco pad

🩸some paints to make colourful prints if desired. Perhaps acrylics, or if you want encapsulation, food colourings.

🩸scissors of you want to trim membranes

How to:

🔴take the placenta and put it on the absorbent surface and have a look at it. There is usually some blood on it, and you might have quite a BIT of blood on it. Keep some on the placenta for it’s first print. But you may want to pic off some clots. Then put the placenta fetal side up (the smooth side, with the vessels visible!)……you may want to transfer it to a second absorbent surface at that point to eliminate stray blood on the print.

🔴you may or may not want to trim the membranes off, I prefer them left on, and you can also tuck them under the placenta if you want to.

🔴arrange the placenta in a way that is appealing to you, the cord can be shaped into whatever you want it to, you may even have enough length to spell out words/names/etc.

🔴the first print is easily done with the blood already on the placenta…..you may need to massage a little blood over the placenta so make the print show up well. Don’t forget to add blood to the cord.

🔴then the printy bit bring the paper to the placenta, NOT THE ORHER WAY ROUND. Some people try to plop the placenta on paper for a nice print, but you have very little control over how it’s going to look if you do that, and it gets super messy easily. So, bring the paper to the placenta, and gently press it over the whole surface, including the cord. Then, gently peel the paper away from the placenta again. Hey presto!

🔴you can reprint with blood, OR you can then start painting the placenta with desired colours….some people pick out the vessels on the placenta surface with different colours, some put blotches over the placenta for a more random look, you can use one colour or multiple ones, metallic colours like gold, bronze or silver look EPIC!

🔴You can also use glitter if so inclined.

🔴kids LOVE to help with this

🔴I personally delayed printing my placentas (well, babies’ placentas) for about 9 and 13 years so my kids would have the opportunity to explore and print their own placentas. My 9 year old was thrilled, but my 13 year old son opted out so it is absolutely fine print a placenta from frozen…..you may lose some vessel definition, and not get the typical ‘tree of life’ appearance.

🔴blood can fade over time, as can some food colourings, so maybe get some UV protective fixing spray for the print!

So, easy peasy really, and not all the complicated at all

HAPPY PRINTING and below some examples of placenta prints.

Do you have any placenta prints to show off ?