Hand and Footprint Ornaments

At this time last year I was pregnant, sick 24/7, and exhausted.  My husband recently commented about how we didn't do many Christmas activities last year and I had to remind him that I was basically nonfunctional during the month of December.  There were a few good days, though, and on one of those days I spent a cozy morning with my moms group.  We attempted snow globes that fell apart almost immediately and then we all sat our kids around the table to make handprint ornaments.  With a bunch of 15 month olds running around, its amazing we got anything done, but with snacks and toys, we were able to keep them busy so we could chat and be crafty.

This year it was just the kids and I making the handprint ornaments, but my inspiration came from one of the moms from that group.  She made the cutest handprint ornament on a bulb with her son last year and so I decided to try the bulb handprint as well.  I started with 2 year old B and had this brilliant idea to use glitter over the paint, but it turned out looking like this:

Kind of funky looking, right?  So I started over.  2 year old B loved the feeling of the paint on her hand and she kept asking me to paint her again... and again... and again!

I had her hold her painted hand out and then I rolled the ornament over her hand.  I learned from a couple of tries that you need to do the handprint higher up on the ornament (like closer to the part that hangs) and that you need to start with the palm of the hand and roll up to the fingers.  I started with the fingers on one try and the palm didn't make a print.  I also discovered that baby wipes take the paint right off if you make a mistake so it was really easy to keep trying until I got a handprint that I liked.

Making baby M's handprint turned out to be impossible.  I painted baby M's hand and then she closed up that hand into the tightest ball that there was no way of even peeling the fingers apart to attempt a print.  So I ended up doing her foot.  I did the same process with the foot and started with the heel and pressed her foot around the upper part of the ornament.  It took a couple of tries, but I think it turned out pretty well.  Once I had a nice footprint, I wrote her name on the paint, but the black writing took something away from the cuteness of the ornament. 

Luckily I only wrote on one ornament so I was able to pull out those baby wipes again and make another footprint.  I made 2 ornaments for each kid.  One for us and one for grandma and grandpa.  Once they were dry I made name tags to attach to ribbon on the ornaments and voila, our 2012 hand and footprint ornaments are ready to be hung on the tree.  I thought about putting tinsel in the bulb to fancy them up a bit, but when I hung them on the tree they looked pretty enough with the lights shining through.