Christmas Handprints

Ok, so this one is a little delayed. Let's just call it inspiration for next Christmas!

One of the recurring activities in our advent calendar this year was making Christmas crafts. One of the first crafts that we made back in early December was Christmas themed hand prints.

As you've probably noticed, we're quite fond of making hand print creations. We've made hand print flags for 4th of July and turkeys, pilgrims and native Americans for Thanksgiving. This time around we made Santa and his reindeer.

Here's a look at how we made them...

For Santa, I painted the base of the girls hands and their thumbs red for Santa's hat. I painted their fingers white for his beard and added a little more white on the sides on their hands and along the edge of the red. This left a section in the middle of their palms which I painted a flesh colour for Santa's face.

Ava's Santa hand ready to print

Lola's Santa hand

The girls then stamped their hands down on the paper to create their Santas. As Santa's beard is white we decided to use a pale blueish paper so the paint would stand out. We did try a few on white paper but they just didn't show up quite enough.

Stamping Santa faces

Doesn't quite show up so well on white paper

Once the paint had dried the girls added the details. Eyes and a smile for Santa's face plus a white pom pom on the end of his hat. I had actually planned on painting the ends of their thumbs with white paint to form the pom pom but forgot at the time!

Adding Santa's eyes and mouth

Lola gives her Santas a few details too 

A white pom pom on the end of the hat

Santa needs his reindeer to help him out so they were our next creations. The bodies of the reindeer were super easy to print. I just covered the girls hands in brown paint and they were ready to print!

Super easy reindeer bodies

Once the reindeer prints were dry the girls added black hooves, eyes and antlers plus a shiny red nose. We've got lots of Rudolphs!

All reindeer have red noses, right?

Adding antlers

Lola adds a few details to her reindeer too

And that's it... done!

Lola's Santas and reindeer.
The Santa on the left appears to have had a bit of an accident!

Reindeer

Ava's Santa

I wasn't quite sure what we'd do with our Christmas hand prints. In the past Ava has just written messages on the page and we've stuck our hand prints on the front door (like our Thanksgiving turkeys from 2012 which you can see here). I've also cut all of the hand prints out and decorated our front door with a mass of them (like our Thanksgiving hand prints from 2013 which you can see here). As some of the Santas were printed in opposite directions (in order to fit better on the page) I decided to cut them out. For a festive feel I stuck them on our front door in the a circle - just like a wreath!  

Hand print wreath

Our hand print wreath helped Santa work out which door was ours when he visited on Christmas Eve!

Santa's footprints lead right to our wreath.
Not sure why he didn't just come direct from the North Pole seeing as it's right next door! 

And there you have it - a little inspiration for next Christmas!

Hmm... now what to print with our hands next?