Christmas Craft Ideas: Handprint Christmas Tree

We've got our decorations up and the house is full of Christmas. The boy-o has been busy making some Christmas art, and one of them has been hung up in his play corner. We made a Christmas Tree out of his handprints, with his name written in block letters as the "stem" of the tree. I'm really pleased with how well it turned out, and the boy-o had a blast painting.

We simply painted his hand in one colour and stamped all of that colour of handprint, and then switched to the second colour and did all of those prints together. After we finished our specific painting project I just let him have at it with the paint which resulted in lots of smiles. 

This was a super easy craft to make and would be a great gift for those hard to buy for grandparents or aunts/uncles that you don't get to see very often. It also looks really cute framed up on the wall. Just remember to write the date on the back so years from now when you're looking at it again you remember when it was made. 

Father's Day Craft Ideas #1

If you're like me, you have no real idea what to give your husband/partner for Father's Day. Last year I had a little photo shoot done with our then 7 week old son, and this year I'd like him to be a little more actively involved in the gift making process.

One of the best ways to have young kids participate in artwork making is to do hand/footprints with paint! So we hosted a craft making party for all of the boy-o's little friends and made some awesome artwork for Dad.

The first example of what we came up with is the Bee/Butterfly combo.

To start with I drew a long skinny oval for each of the bodies, which helped to line up where to print the footprint onto the paper. We did the footprints so that the smaller edge of the foot was against the bug's body (big toe on the outside) to make the wings as big as we could. For the bee we just stamped in yellow and I painted on the stripes afterwards. For the butterfly I applied all three colours to the boy-o's foot at once. 

Once the paint was dried we added a bit of glue and stuck on some googly eyes, and presto--footprint bugs are complete! It was a lot of fun to make, and they turned out super cute. You could add a sweet message to the page or personalize however you'd like. Just make sure you remember to add the date so if you keep it you can remember what year it's from.

More examples to come of Father's Day craft ideas in the next few days...so stay tuned!