by Rachel Parkinson
Years ago I had seen a large banner made by blanking off parts of the cloth to leave a cross shape revealed. People then walked all over it having dipped the soles of their feet in paint. The result – a footprint cross – was really effective. I wanted to do the same for our second Messy Church.
However, the first had been done by teenagers – our ‘Messy Churchers’ are mainly pre-school and infants. I wondered how many towels I should take! Then a mum had a wonderful idea – why not use wellies? She provided me with several her children had outgrown. We left them by the paint trays and children just slipped their feet into them. It was so popular that there was no way you could see discrete footprints in the finished product but that didn’t matter. We used blue/green/red to make the Lent Cross.
Then at our Holy Saturday Messy Church we blanked off the cross and did the same with the outside parts, using yellow and orange paint – making it an Easter cross. It hung in Church on Easter Sunday and looked wonderful. Do protect the surface underneath as the amount of paint applied is likely to be significant!
