Handprint Christmas Ornaments 2012: The Remix

While I was pleased with our handprint ornaments this year, when we were done I felt they lacked a "certain something," so I added more glitter paint (what doesn't get better after adding more glitter paint?!?) and the kids' initials to their ornaments.  I think it added just the right amount of Christmas flair.  

Have a great day everyone!

Handprint Christmas Ornaments 2012

Last year we started the tradition of making handprint Christmas ornaments for our families.  I was excited to do it again this year since the kids would actually be able to help with the painting process.  Just like with painting pumpkins, Chloe was really excited to get her hands messy and paint away, but Brady was not thrilled at all about the process.  He didn't mind pressing his hand into the dough to make an impression, but when it came time to paint the ornaments he was NOT happy.  In fact, he was so unhappy I didn't even get a chance to snap a picture of him painting his ornaments.

I did get a few pictures of Chloe painting and of the finished product though, so I will share those with you:

I am looking forward to sending these out soon to the grands and great grands.  I am already getting in the holiday spirit this year!  Before you know it I will be one of those crazy people who starts playing Christmas music waaaaay too soon!  :-)

Craft Project: Cut & Paste A-Z Scrapbook

We are preparing to travel with the babies soon, so I have been racking my brain for ideas to keep them occupied on the airplane.  I was thinking back to when I was very little and the things that I loved or thought were really cool.  One thing I remember vividly even though I was very young, was a scrapbook my Grandma made me that just had random pictures cut out from different magazines.  I LOVED looking through it and pointing at different things and naming them with her.  Since I grew up in the mid 80s we didn't have access to clip art or color printers or any of that cool stuff.  We certainly didn't have an iPad to entertain us!  Thinking back about my scrapbook from my Grandmother inspired me to make one for my own kids, just as she did, by simply going through magazines, cutting out pictures, and pasting them in a scrapbook.

This is a time consuming project, but requires very little other than old magazines, a glue stick, scissors, a scrapbook, and time.  The scrapbook I bought at a local craft store is 8X8 and has plastic protector sheets and the white sheet just slides out, which made it easy to do a page and then put it back in the plastic sheet.  I think it would be a cool project to do with an older pre-school or kindergarten aged child.  You could practice cutting and pasting skills, as well as getting them involved in finding the objects that go with each letter.  If you had readers or writers, they could write the words next to the pictures themselves.

Anyhow, I finished my project and I am pleased with how it turned out!  I hope Brady and Chloe will enjoy this book for years to come as I enjoyed mine!  I wanted to share some pictures of the finished project with you:

A

B & C

D-F

G-J

K-N

O-R

S & T 

U-W

X & Y

Z

Well, that's it.  I enjoyed working on this project during the babies' nap time and after they went to bed at night.  I hope they will enjoy this scrapbook, I am excited to show it to them on the plane for the first time!  

(Mis)Adventures in Finger Paint

Today I was able to complete the finger painting craft project I'd been wanting to do with the babies.  I had several goals for the project:  1. The paint must be safe for the babies, particularly since the babies still put everything in their mouths.  2. The paint couldn't be made of egg, pudding, or milk since I wanted to keep the artwork once it was completed.  3.  Create something as a memento of the babies at 1 year old.

I used Version One of the Basic Finger Paint recipe from this website.  It only has 3 ingredients: Corn Starch, Water, and Food Coloring.  Super easy to make.  Just mix 1/2 cup of corn starch with 2 cups of water, warm in a sauce pan until it thickens.  Separate in individual containers and let cool.  Once the mixture has cooled, add the food coloring.  Here are a couple of pictures of these steps:

These little containers were sealable and I made them on Tuesday night and just unsealed them this afternoon.  Today before we started painting, I took a minute to prep our work area.  I covered the babies' high chairs with a trash bag and then I used painter's tape to tape the paper to their tray so it wouldn't slide around.  Exhibit A:

Next, I picked two colors for each baby to paint with.  For Brady it was Blue and Green:

This is his finished product:

And here is Chloe's (her two colors were Purple and Pink):

I was really happy with how they turned out, my only complaint was that the food coloring temporarily stained the babies' hands.  Chloe's hands were hardly stained at all, for whatever reason the pink and purple weren't as prone to staining.  The blue and green were pretty noticeable on Brady's hands.  I learned that washing the hands with white vinegar and cool water helps to get the food color stains to go away.  The sooner you wash their hands the better.  

Here is Brady's "Green" hand:

Here is Brady's "Blue" hand:

His expression in that photo seems to be like, "So my hand is a little blue, who cares?"  

By the end of the night and after their baths, you couldn't see any of the food coloring stains left on their hands, so I was very glad about that!  Overall, it was a fun project and I am thinking I will frame their works of art to hang in the nursery!  

 

Christmas Ornaments

EDITED TO ADD:  I just learned after mailing these in a bubble wrap envelope that many recipients said their ornaments were broken. You may need to make fewer ornaments (maybe 4 instead of 6?) so they are thicker and stronger, or add more flour to the recipe below?  The first set of ornaments seemed to be more durable, that recipe is linked in the paragraph below.

I wanted to do a keepsake ornament to commemorate the babies' first Christmas for the grandparents and great grandparents (and also for us), so I looked online and I found this recipe to make clay for handprint ornaments.  It required hardly any ingredients and looked simple enough.  I should note I ended up doing this project twice because one set of ornaments was damaged when a Fed Ex driver threw one of the packages on one of our family member's porches.

I was much happier with the second batch of ornaments because I used a recipe mentioned by one of the reviewers of the original recipe.  This reviewer divided the original recipe by 4, and since I only had to make one replacement set of ornaments and one set of ornaments for me and Chad to keep, I decided to use the reviewer's recipe for the smaller amount.  I was much happier with the consistency of that recipe as the dough was much softer and more pliable.  This made it much easier to make an impression on the dough with the babies' hands.  It was a more manageable amount to knead as well.  Note:  The recipe below is for the smaller amount of clay and makes about 6 ornaments 4 inch in diameter. 

Here is the list of needed materials and the process (along with pictures):

MATERIALS NEEDED:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup salt
• 7 tablespoons water
• optional food coloring (if you choose not to paint ornaments)
•  round cookie cutter (I used 4 inch)
• ribbon
• acrylic paints
• paintbrushes
• straw (McDonald's straw works really well)

STEPS:

1.  Mix together flour, salt, and water.   If you plan to use food coloring instead of painting your ornaments, mix in food coloring also.

2.  Knead dough for 15 minutes.  Roll out dough.

3.  Use cookie cutter to cut out ornament shapes.  Press child or baby's hands in the middle of the ornament to make an impression.  Use a straw to make a hole in the ornament for the ribbon to go through.

4.  Heat oven to 300 degrees F.  Bake ornaments for 40-45 minutes or until golden and hard.

5.  Wait for ornaments to cool and paint as desired.  I also wrote the baby's name, age, and 2011 on the back of our ornaments.

6.  Put a ribbon of your choice through the ornament.

These pictures are all from the second batch of ornaments I did.  Since I liked these so much better and the handprints showed up so much clearer I decided to do more ornaments than I initially intended and resend these to everyone. Some of you may wonder how I had time to do these.  I did a lot of the mixing, cutting out shapes, and painting during the babies' naps.  Some of the time they were in the kitchen with me like this:

They had fun in their Pack N Play playing and trying to steal each other's toys (like in the above picture).  I think it is a fun ornament idea and I believe we will do these again.  Maybe next year the babies will "help" me paint their ornaments!  In case you were wondering, the green ornaments are Brady's hands and the red ornaments are Chloe's.