These homemade Christmas gifts from our then 3 year-old were such a big hit with our family and friends last year that we wanted to share the idea with you. Are you looking for a great way for your child to give unique and priceless Christmas gifts to your spouse or partner, family members and close friends that will be treasured forever? Well, look no further: Printable handprint and footprint gift cards with poems make the perfect Christmas gifts for mom, dad, parent, grandparents, godparents, family friends, and more!
Last year we were looking for ideas for our Destiny Baby to be able to give his own gifts from last year. We felt like having him create his own gifts at the age of 3 would foster his sense of independence as well as start to teach him about the importance of giving and expressing love and thankfulness for others.
After looking through many craft sites for teachers and home schoolers, we decided to incorporate his handprint onto beautifully printed cardstock (fortunately Destiny Baby’s daddy does graphic design). Footprints can also be used and are a really cute and lovely keepsake if your child is very young. (One of our favorite family photos from Sears when Destiny Baby was only a few months is a picture of our clasped hands holding his tiny feet!) Printable handprint or footprint Christmas cards can be given as is or framed for an inexpensive way to make a priceless Christmas gift for parents, grandparents, the whole family and dear friends.
How do you create this gift? Well, you can download a beautiful pre-printed background and poem keepsake for your child’s handprint or footprint. See the preschool printables page here at DestinyBaby and type in “Christmas printables” (without the quotes) and find a nice page that your child likes, which will serve as the background for the card. Then, choose your favorite holiday poem or Christmas carol lyric to add by hand to the print.
For the home crafter and digitally-inclined out there, you can also do it yourself. First, open your favorite image editor like Photoshop or the free GIMP software and create or find and paste a poem along with a background graphic of your choosing. Play around with the layout until you are satisfied, leaving a space for your child’s handprint or foot print and a place to sign her or his name.
Then, you dip your child’s hand into finger paint. You can try the 16-Oz. Color Splash! Washable Finger Paint Assortment (Pack of 6)
Also, if you are looking for an alternative to manufactured finger paints, you can make your own (edible–in theory at least) paint on demand out of household food items. Thanks to a post on Craft Blog, we’ve found a recipe. You add cold water to two cups of flour until you get a smooth lump free paste. Then slowly add freshly boiled hot water to the paste, strirring until you get a thick consistency for finger painting. Next, split the mix into cups for different colors and add food dye to each cup. You can get a brilliant spectrum of color fromm Ateco 12-Color Food Coloring Kit
The result is a fabulous toddler safe paint! From the pictures of finished artwork made with these paints, which you can see if you follow the link above, the paint looks exactly the same as store bought paint. There are other recipes for home-made paints of varying texture (including homemade puff paint) at Family Play and Learn.
After you dip your child’s hand in paint, next press their palm and fingers either right side up or upside-dow. You then decorate the handprint–each poem corresponds to five designs–snowmen (right side up – each digit is a snowman), Santa (upside down, the fingers become Santa’s beard), an angel (upside down, the palm becomes the face of an angel), an ornament (just the palm–no fingers) or snowflake (many overlapping handprints). Add faces, halos, wings and color and glitter to decorate your child’s handprint. You can also glue on bits of felt or cloth or cotton balls to really embellish your designs. Let your child’s imagination run wild!
I really love how our son’s printable handprint cards turned out. We plan to do it again this year and cannot wait to send them off to our family and friends. As a gift to DestinyBaby.com readers, we’ll post the poems I have written and we are using to give as part of our son’s gifts this year. I’ll be sharing them under a non-commercial Creative Commons license. You can use the poems in your own project!
Coming soon: We’ll post a picture of one of our final printed cards. If you are not graphically inclined and would like a professionally designed background for your toddlers handprint or footprint keepsake, just send me a private message with your child’s age and we’ll create, for a nominal fee, a pdf of full-color cards and the poems set with beautiful typography, ready to be personalized with your child’s handprint or footprint and name.
Of course, you can just use the poems for free, following the instructions above if you like.
Happy Holidays!
