St. Patty's Day Ideas for Kids

Hey, friends!  The next holiday on the horizon is St. Patrick's Day, so I thought I'd share a few of our projects from St. Patty's Days Past that you might have missed.  This first one is actually the very first blog post I ever did here on One Artsy Mama, believe it or not!  It was back when I had about six followers, and they were all members of my family.  Safe to say, you probably never read it, so take a peek!

Pipecleaner Rainbow in a Pot of Gold

Loopy Rainbow

Handprint Leprechauns

Hope you enjoy these little blasts from the past!  LC sure did!

Hugs & Glitter,

Christmas Handprint Plaque

Hey friends, I have a really special treat for you today!  You've heard me mention one of my best friends, Erin, about a million times...well, she's here today to share one of her own projects with you and in her own words too, which makes it super-awesome because she's absolutely hilarious.  I know you're going to love her...and this project too!  Here she is...

**********************************************************

Hello to all those in “One Artsy Mama” land! My name is Erin, and you may know me from such craft projects as the “Joy Votives”, “Shamrock Bags”, and most recently, our famous “Star Bowls”. I not only have the privilege of calling Amy one of my bestest buds and fellow crafters, but I am also a mother to two precious “Irish Twin” boys, ages 2 ½ and 1 ½!

The wonderful Amy has allowed me a chance to share one of the Christmas projects I’ve been working on this holiday season. In order to begin, we need to go back in time a bit, to about October. Amy blogged about the loss of my amazing mother, and needless to say it’s been a rough couple of months. During the week that Mom passed, my mother-in-law flew out from Texas, and stayed at our house. As I dealt with family matters, my mother-in-law took over my house (in a good way!). She and my husband made sure my boys were kept alive and well, that everyone was fed, and my house had never looked cleaner. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when dear MIL posted a link to Santa-shaped salt dough ornaments, with a child’s hand print as the body with the caption “I might like these with the boys' prints!”. I “pretended” not to notice. Ha. Little did she know.

The project came together in my head, and I did a few sketches then headed out on a solo run to Michaels. I’m pretty sure at this point, Amy and I had this conversation:  {Amy says - um, yes, we definitely did.  You were doing this while I was running errands and pouting that you didn't invite me.  See how she is?}



 My Michaels trip was successful, and I came home with some new craft supplies (and apparently Toy Story Christmas wrapping paper. Darn you, Michaels.) Here was the haul:

(In other news, I’m sorry for crappy Iphone Pictures. I didn’t feel like stopping to take a lot of pictures because I was uber excited.)

 So, what you need for the Christmas Handprint Plaque:

-Mod Podge (both regular and fabric)

-Felt (I did brown, red, and sparkle red. I only used the brown and sparkle)
-Letter Stencil (optional)
-Wooden Plaque (or any flat surface)
-Spray Paint (I did blue, to cover the plaque)
-Pom Poms
-Tiny Jingle Bells
-Various Paint (I had white, flesh tone, brown, and black)
-Snow-Tex
-Picture Hanging Kit (Optional)
-Various Paint Brushes
-White Card Stock

First step was spray painting the wooden plaque, giving it plenty of time to dry. I did several coats (as I kept finding pet hair, and had to redo another layer. Sheesh.)

 Next up was the scariest part. Handprints. Ok. I have two little boy toddlers, one of which is a CONSTANT mover, the other (the eldest) who’s funny about things on his hands. I had no idea how this was going to go, as I have never been successful with handprinting them before. My husband was on standby with paper towels and extra card stock paper, and a clear path to the bathroom sink. First up, the youngest. He was to have “reindeer hands” so I took a sponge paint brush, and painted his little hand brown. I was shocked as he held still long enough for me to paint him, and then place his hand on the cardstock. Seriously, this was too good to be true! He allowed me to do about 7 prints, giving me plenty to choose from! My eldest was up next, and I placed the paint on his hand (white on the fingers, flesh tone on the palm for Santa) and held my breath. He LOVED it! Success! I got about 8 good prints from him and I only needed one! The prints were done and needed to dry. I have 4 animals and two toddlers. Finding safe drying places is tricky.

After the prints dried, it was time to decorate them. For Santa, I used the sparkly red felt for his hat (and fabric mod podge on the back to glue it down), and cut white pom poms in half for his hat border. An added jingle bell completed his look! Ho, ho, ho! The reindeers got decked out in sparkly red felt and jingle bells, brown felted antlers, and of course Rudolf got a red pom pom nose! All facial features were painted on.

 The next day, the plaque was dry, and so I pulled out the Snow-Tex to add a snowy landscape. I’ve never worked with the stuff before, but I fell in love with it. Seriously. Love at first brush stroke.

Once you do your first layer of Snow-Tex, you can put more on to add bigger snow peaks.

Next up, was stenciling letters on the plaque. I began with practicing on a piece of cardstock, so I knew where it would go, how big it should be, letter spacing, etc. I HATE stenciling. There, I said it. I feel better.

See, I don’t mind the stenciling when it’s on a piece of paper, but knowing that I might have to stencil on the actual project? I always mess it up. Always. So I usually use the stencil as a guide and free hand it.

Not too bad. I also added Sno-Tex on the top of the letters because I’m obsessed because it looked really cute.

Once everything was dry, it was time to add Santa and his reindeer. I mod podged the back of the handprints, stuck on the prints, then mod podged over them. I also ended up hot gluing the reindeer feet and Santa’s beard down on the snowy peaks, to keep them flat. I added a border of snow-tex around the whole thing, as well as a few snowflakes.

The following day, I added a picture hanger on the back, in case Nonie wanted to hang it up, as well as a quick inscription with dates, names, and ages.

And that’s it! I loooove how it turned out, and my mother-in-law has no idea that it’s coming. It’s the perfect memento to pull out Christmas after Christmas, and it was very inexpensive to make!

A huge “Thank you” to Amy for allowing me to hijack her blog for the day! I wish a lot of you knew Amy in real life, because you have no idea how amazing she is. She has a beautiful, generous spirit and her warmth and laughter is a blessing in my life. I love you One Artsy Mama!

******************************

Sniffle...*little tear*
Oh, ahem, thanks so much, Erin, for sharing your project with us today!  Hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did!  Now I feel a sudden need to go buy some Snow-Tex, how about you?  Well, have a fabulous day, friends!  And I love you right back, Erin!  

Hugs and glitter,

The Prince of "Prints"

My husband is a fantastic father to our Little Crafter.  Watching the two of them together brings me such joy and when I see hubby in that role, it just makes me love him more.  LC is just crazy about his daddy and wants to be "big and strong" like him when he grows up.  Needless to say, I wanted to make sure that we did something really special for him for Father's Day.

{Dan, if by some crazy chance you're reading this...STOP NOW!!!}

I saw this idea at the C.R.A.F.T. linky party this morning.  Southern Lovely made this adorable 12x12 canvas using her kids' handprints and names.  I thought it was adorable, but since I just have one Noah, I decided to tweak it a bit to fill an entire canvas.

Little Crafter and I headed to Michaels and found a two-pack of 12x12 canvases on sale for less than $5!  Major score!  We brought them home {after a quick stop at Starbucks, where he tried my frappucino and spit it out all over me :p} and got to work!

PERSONALIZED CANVAS FOR DADDY

Materials:

12x12 canvas

acrylic or washable kids' paint: whatever colors you want

brushes in various shapes and sizes

pencil

ruler

computer paper

digital photo of child turned sideways

STEP 1: Use a ruler to divide canvas into four 6x6" squares...not sure why this pic turned sideways.

STEP 2: Use ruler {or a printed out letter from the computer} to draw a letter representing child's first name in upper left square.

STEP 3: Choose a paint color and carefully paint square except for letter.  LC chose green.  I painted around the letter and the "edges" where the lines were, and he helped me paint the rest.

STEP 4: Choose a color and paint entire upper right square.  LC picked orange this time.  I did the edges, and then he went to town.  I was so nervous about him staying "in the lines" but he did a super job.

 

STEP 4: Repeat for bottom squares.  LC picked yellow and blue.

STEP 5: Once paint is dry in upper left square, carefully paint letter.  LC wanted blue {no surprise there} and I did most of the work on that part since it required a lot of "edge work" and didn't have much room for error.  He was okay with that, thankfully!

STEP 6: Trace and cut out silhouette of child.  I pulled up this photo from Easter in my photo editor and zoomed in until it was a good size to fit in the square.  Then I put computer paper up to the screen and traced the silhouette onto it, which worked well because there was a lot of backlight.

STEP 7: Trace silhouette onto canvas in bottom right square.

 

STEP 8: Paint silhouette.  This was another "mama job" which Little Crafter didn't mind because he was busy doing his new 35 piece Thomas puzzle all by himself!

 STEP 9: Paint child's foot and press onto bottom left square.  Make sure your paint is dry first.

STEP 10: Repeat using child's right hand in upper right corner. {that is, after you've cleaned said child's foot}

STEP 11: Add words if desired.  I used "June 2011," "blessing," and "love."

There you have it, a quick, semi-simple but super-personal gift for Dad!  Now the hardest part is going to be keeping it a secret until Sunday.  LC looooves to talk and I can just see him telling Daddy, "I made you a present today.  Mama painted my hands and feet and we made a canvas."  I told him it's top secret, but I'm not sure what that translates to in his 2 year old mind...

While we were messy and working with prints, we decided to make a cute T-shirt using his handprints too.  Why not?  A few months ago, we had bought a 5-pack of white t-shirts from Target because I wanted him to decorate one when we learned about Joseph and his coat of many colors...this was the result. :)

Meanwhile, he has the leftover white shirts which he doesn't want to wear because "dere's nothing on dat shirt."  Last week, I saw an idea at a linky party {forgive me, I don't remember which one or what blog the idea actually came from...if you know, please tell me so I can give credit where it's due!} using handprints to make a crab!  Since we live in the crab capital of the US, I figured it was only appropriate to try it ourselves.

HANDPRINT CRAB SHIRT

Materials:

red and black fabric paint

paint brushes: one large, one small

paper bag

white t-shirt, prewashed

All you have to do is paint the child's hands with red fabric paint and put the prints going sideways, slightly overlapping and with thumbs pointing to the neck.  Once the paint dried, I added freehand eyes and a smile using black fabric paint and a thin brush.  LC wants to wear it tomorrow.  Be sure to wash the t-shirt first and to put cardboard or a bag inside the shirt before you paint!

Well, my little prince of "prints" is napping now, but we both had a fantastic time today.  I have to tell this story; as I was painting his hand for the final print, he said to me {totally out of the blue}, "This is the best day ever."  Melt. my. heart.

It's a little bittersweet how big he's getting, but I'll take the tradeoff because I love that he can express things like that to me and that he's big enough to do projects like this together in the first place.  Check this out, though...here's his newborn pic next to the one I took this morning.