Adventures in Craftiness: I Love Handprints Part I

Have I mentioned that I love handprints? Well, I do. I think that handprint projects are one of the best crafts to do with children. They're simple, inexpensive, have sentimental value, chart growth, and can be done with a child of any age, even newborns. My son did his very first handprint project at 3 months old (with some help from Mommy of course).

It was October 2010. Like many overexcited parents heading into their child's first major holiday, I wanted to give James a picture perfect Halloween, even if he was only three months old and more excited by his own fingers than costumes, pumpkin patches, and hayrides. We headed out to a local farm that had a "pumpkin patch" for the holiday (really a zucchini field with pre-cut pumpkins placed here and there) and picked out two pumpkins: one for me to carve and one for James to decorate.

Then we brought them home and got started. James might not have been thrilled with the trip to the pumpkin patch, but he genuinely enjoyed decorating his pumpkin. I used white, non-toxic, acrylic paint and applied it to his hand with a paintbrush.

I then pressed his hand to different areas around the entire pumpkin, reapplying the paint between handprints.

I was really thrilled with the way it turned out. It was James' first work of art! I wanted to keep it forever. However, going into this project, I knew that I was going to feel that way, which is why I used a natural pumpkin. Otherwise, I would eventually end up with a closet full of handprint pumpkins, one for every year of every child's life. But, if you like the idea of a closet full of handprint pumpkins, you could do this project with a plastic pumpkin, rather than a natural one.