Christmas Prints

Today we tried out some christmas art that's easy to do with the kids, it got a little messy at times but the end result is some beautiful christmas keepsakes of my precious little ones hand and foot prints.

What you need:

• Good quality paper, or canvas
• A selection of paints 
• Kids...or you could do it with adults, no christmas art judgement here
• Something to protect your table and floor...I use an old sheet or news papers when painting
• Baby wipes are handy to have on hand for a quick clean before heading to the sink to wash the paint off
• Patience when working with kids

What you do:

Foot prints

• After setting up the work space, (I choose to do the foot prints on the floor), carefully paint the bottom of your childs foot.  I started by doing my youngest first, she is only 10 months so I sat her on my knee to paint her tiny feet.  I had chosen a christmas tree design for her so needed to print both her feet.  Doing one foot at a time I painted her heel and instep green and her toes red, then carefully lowered her foot onto the paper.  The second foot I placed on the paper with the heels over lapping creating a triangle shape.
• Once the print is dry, paint a little pot on the bottom of the tree and a star on the top.
• Name and date, so you have a record of how old your little munchkin is.

• The next design I did was Reindeer, so just did one foot each of my older two girls.
• Being older and stable on their feet, they were able to hold their foot up for me while I painted it brown and could press it down on the paper without too much guidance from me.  This is when baby wipes came in handy as I was able to wipe down their feet so they didn't run brown paint all through the house.  They may be old enough to stand in one leg, but not quite old enough to be trusted not to bolt!
• Once the print is dry, paint a little red nose on down on the heel, some eyes with white and black paint, and some antlers, which are really just crooked lines coming off each other.

Hand prints

• This big christmas tree is perfect to do with just one child, multiple children or even the whole family.  We did it with all the three of the kids.
• I found the easiest way to do it (we tried it out a couple of times) was to start at the top with the smallest hand and work downwards in rows, increasing by one hand print in each row.  So we started with bubs hand at the top of the tree, then two more of her prints on row two.  Then the middle child who is always in the middle did the middle row, with three hand prints. Then the oldest did her four hand prints down the bottom.  All in green paint of course!
• Once it was completely dried, we painted bubs hand yellow and used her chubby beautiful baby hand as our star.  I then painted a brown truck, and used a trusty ol' sharpie to draw on some line for lights.  Child numero uno then finger painted on the lights in red, blue and yellow.
• Make sure you put the year on this one too.

We loved how they turned out so much that we headed down to the local el' cheapo store and bought some frames to display them in.  They will definitely be getting dragged out each christmas from now on.