Baby hand prints banner

Courtesy of www.make-baby-stuff.com


I haven't tried this out, but it looks so easy and fun to do! Isn't it adorable?


You can hang this in the baby's room, in the living room or make it a birthday decoration. Or turn it into a personalised invitation or card. The possibilities are endless!


Try it out, won't you?


Materials:

• Paper - heavier is better (like cardstock) and will last longer but even computer paper will work
• Scissors
• Hole Punch - you can also poke holes with the scissors instead
• Ribbon or String - length depends on how long you want your finished banner to be
• Paint - finger paint or other washable paint can be used, but if you are making a banner you'd like to keep for several years, use non-toxic acrylic paint or watercolor paint. When buying acrylic or watercolor paints, look for the AP Certified Non-Toxic seal. Wash baby's hands right away after using the paint and it will come off with a little soap and warm water. However, acrylic paint and professional water color paint (in the tubes, not those cheapie tray of hardened cakes) will permanently mark clothes so be sure to use a smock, bib or have baby paint without a shirt on. Finger paints/washable paints are fine, but over time they will break down and fade so should not be used for keepsake art.

You can either start by stamping baby's hand on sheets of paper (leaving room between to cut out) or you can cut out circles, squares, triangles or hearts in the paper first and then stamp on the shapes. I didn't have time to pre-cut out shapes (my son was ready to go, he loves crafts!) so we just did our hand stamps directly onto big sheets of drawing paper. Once completely dry, we traced an upside down martini glass for the circle shape but you could use glasses, bowls, food containers or large cookie cutters or just freehand shapes like hearts or stars.

Once you have your shapes all ready, use a hole punch to make two holes in your shape, at least an inch apart. Finally, thread your ribbon through the two holes as shown and keep going until your baby hand prints banner garland is complete. Using ribbon (rather than thin string) is ideal because it "holds" the paper circles in place and they don't shift around. You can arrange them overlapping or spread them apart. If you have enough, put two circles back to back so your banner will be double sided and can be hung streamer style across the center of a room. If you don't have enough, you can just hang along a wall.

These are very lightweight and just a bit of tape will hold them up but you could also use tacks and place the tack right through the ribbon for a secure hanging.

Variation Ideas:

For younger babies under the age of one, it may be easier to make a banner out of footprints, as some babies tend to grab at the paint/paper and it may be difficult to get a good clear hand stamp. How many you use depends on how long you want your banner garland to be.

As with all our tutorials, we show the basics as a jumping off point! Some variations of this craft are to use colored paper, cut out the shapes with a pinking shears to have a decorative edge, have older children write and draw on the shapes add "Happy Birthday" letters across the banner in between the handprints, use different shapes other than circles, use foot prints, add glitter or use fabric and do the stamps direct onto fabric with acrylic paint. And so on...have fun getting creative!

Source: www.make-baby-stuff.com