Daddy, Kate and I got set up for our very first art project together: Handprint Christmas Ornaments. Kate was already six weeks old when we did her handprint, so we figured it was about time to start arts and crafts!
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| Our family Christmas 2012 art project! |
(If you've followed us and/or read any of our other posts, you know that Kate's Mommy and Daddy like to get creative. We're hoping Kate likes to too!)
Anyway, I found a lovely ornament online that we re-created. And it was all natural and very simple! The hardest part was waiting for the salt dough handprints to dry so that we could paint them!
First we made some salt dough out of flour, salt, and lukewarm water in the following proportions:
-1 cup of All Purpose Flour
-1/2 cup of Salt
-1/2 cup of lukewarm water
We mixed the flour and the salt and then we added the water and kneaded it all together until we had the perfect ball of dough - not too dry or grainy and nice and smooth!
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| We made it perfectly round too...not that that really matters. |
Then we sprinkled a bit of flour on our rolling area and rolled the dough out like we would if we were making sugar cookies.
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| Rollin', rollin', rollin'! |
Once we had a flat slab of dough, we grabbed our lovely sleeping baby and gently pressed her hand in several times to form the cutest little handprints. We did stick her hand in flour so that it wouldn't stick to the dough before we did her handprints and we noticed that after a couple prints we needed to do another quick dip in the flour.
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| She was a trooper, I tell ya! |
When we got all of our handprints on our dough (it took several times of cutting them out and re-rolling the remainder of the dough), we carefully cut our nine handprints out with a knife, punched a little hole for the ribbon, and set them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper to dry. I read that you could bake them, but that sometimes they crack, and since we were in no rush, we decided to let them air dry. It took about six days to fully air dry and we flipped them three times.
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| Dry hands! |
When Kate's handprints were finally done drying, we gathered all of our supplies for painting and sealing:
-Clear Acrylic Spray Sealer (we used Mod Podge's can one)
-Acrylic craft paint in Black, Red, White, and Tan
-Paintbrushes
-Mod Podge
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| Supplies! |
We sprayed the handprints with the Clear Acrylic Spray Sealer first to get a smooth base for painting. Then we painted each Santa in layers. By the time we finished painting the same layer on all of our ornaments, the first one was dry enough to start with the next layer.
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| Cute, huh?! |
Once all of the paint dried, we coated each ornament with Mod Podge on the front and back and once the Mod Podge was dry, we did a quick spray with the sealer again to add finish and to remove the slightly tacky feel from the Mod Podge.
When everything was dry (a day or so later), we tied ribbons in the holes that we had punched earlier and hung our completed ornament on our tree as well as wrapped a few for gifts for Kate's Grandparents.
And I'll tell you what, we had a BLAST making these ornaments and they turned out FANTASTIC! We were so impressed! I'd make these every single year if I didn't think it would look tacky with a ton of handprint ornaments on our Christmas tree! Instead, I know we'll come up with another project to document our next Christmas, but salt dough projects will come highly recommended from me!
Click below for more photos!
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| Merry Christmas! |
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