Dad's Gift Tutorial

So this is my first tutorial, so bear with me.  I really hope you like it, the pictures may not be fabulous but I think you’ll get the idea.

This past Mother’s Day I became aware of how my younger children who are not it school wanted to make gifts for me.  So I determined to find a gift that the kids could make for their dad for Father’s Day.  I searched the internet but to be honest all I really found were either cheesy poems on coloring sheets or too involved for toddlers.  So I came up with an idea and thought I’d send it out into cyberspace for others to try.

Supplies:

-      Washable Paint, I usually just get the three primary colors and then mix my own colors.

-      Paper/Styrofoam Plates

-      Paint Brushes

-      Hair Dryer

-      Poster Paper, I got a pack of 10 8x10 sheets at JoAnn’s for like $3

-      Pen

-      Kids

-      Soapy water in basin – trust me you want them to wash the paint off their hands right away

 

1)   I started with my oldest, he picked orange for his color.  At first I dipped his hand in the paint but really that was too much paint so for the other kids I just lightly dipped their hand in the paint then painted their hand with the paint brush.

2)   Starting at the far left side of the paper I had Lincoln spread his fingers out really far then ‘stamped’ his left hand down on the paper.

3)   With the hair dryer on the cool setting dry paint.  The paint doesn’t have to be completely dry but at least tacky to the touch, this prevents the colors to mix.

4)   Repeat steps 1-3 with each child overlapping hands.  I went from oldest to youngest so that the hands were stair stepped in size.

5)   Once paper is dry add names of children under their hands.  Make sure to date it.  Since this was a Father’s Day gift I simply wrote ‘Father’s Day 2010’ 

6)   Write Children for the title.  I printed off the word in a font I liked in Word then traced in onto the poster paper.  You could always free hand it or cut and paste, I just didn’t want to do that.

7)   Voila!  You have a one of a kind gift any Father would love.  I actually made three of these, one for Daddy and 2 for the kids grandfathers I simply wrote the word Grandchildren instead of Children.  My father-in-law really liked it.

Now to the important pictures, the kids with colored hands.

 

Variations:

Obviously if you only have one or two kids you could easily put both hands on the page.  I just knew that 10 handprints would never fit on an 8x10 sheet of paper.

If your kids hands are really different in size, say a 6 year old and a 1 year old then you could have the smallest kids handprint nestle inside the bigger kids handprint.

I hope you enjoyed this!