Crafts that children make for the people they love are adorable and often linger as keepsakes long after a child has grown. Handprint crafts are some of the more popular varieties, from the plaster handprint that captures the child’s tiny hand for years to come, to paper crafts that turn handprints into cute images like hearts or holiday icons. There are many varieties of handprint crafts and most are fairly simple to make.
Several types of handprint crafts can be made from items you probably already have around the house. You may need a few extra supplies but you can start with basic paper crafts and move on to more elaborate options. Construction paper works well as does cardstock. As you begin to experiment with other ideas, you can use up leftover fabrics from other projects.
For Thanksgiving, try turkey handprint crafts. The simplest one is to cut handprints from different colored pieces of felt or construction paper. Use brown for the turkey’s body with the thumb area as the turkey’s face. Glue on colored handprints behind the brown fingers to make tail feathers. Add eyes, a beak, and wattle to the face. If you’d like to make a hanging decoration, glue the finished turkey to a paper plate, decorate the edges, and add a ribbon to the back for hanging.
For Christmas, you can trace or have the child trace his or her hand on a piece of green felt. Cut out several patterns for this simple handprint project. Lay the green felt handprints on the work surface, overlapping them a bit until you form a circle. The fingertips should be pointing upward. Attach each piece to the next, and allow the glue to dry. You now have a cute wreath that makes a great homemade Christmas decoration, and you can decorate it with red ribbons or bits of red felt, sequins, or anything you like.
Other holidays can be remembered with handprint crafts as well, and one idea is to form a heart from cutout handprints for Valentine’s Day. Red on a white or pink background looks nice, but you can also alternate the color of the handprints such as making every other one red and filling in with pink. Another option is to use a background that is just a slightly different shade from the cutouts. A fun idea is to make an over-sized greeting card from this craft.
Handprint crafts are fun to make and usually well-received by loved ones, and the handprint T-shirt is no exception. Children can dip their hands in a bit of paint and make random prints on a T-shirt. Print a slogan onto iron-on transfer paper or iron on some letters to make shirts with cute sayings such as “I’m a hands-on Grandma” or “Hands down, best mom.”
