I love to make crafts. I LOVE to make crafts! I see cool ideas, and I can't wait to try them at home with my kids. I love looking at what other people have done and trying to find ways that I can duplicate them at home with things I already own. I LOVE CRAFTS!
But I have a problem: I'm not talented. No seriously, I'm not. Ask my family. I am 99% creativity and 1% talent. My head is full of so many awesome ideas that my hands just can't do. So I have learned to set my expectations low. I've learned to be happy with things that are cute instead of classy, fun instead of fine. And I've learned to lie and say My kids made it! so people are more likely to be impressed than if they knew it was actually made by an adult.
Why am I telling you this? I want you to know that when I recommend a craft, and I say it is a beginner level craft, I mean it. If I can do it, then you can do it!
So without further ado, here is our latest craft.
I was originally inspired by this picture (this is not my picture):
that I got from this website.
I had to make a few changes because I wanted it to be small enough to fit in a frame, so that meant I could only put the kid's hands on it and not mine or my husband's. I started by finding an old frame in the garage. Then I found a piece of light colored fabric big enough to fit the frame (the fabric I used was an old Jedi robe that was previously an old bed sheet). Note: I should have ironed the fabric before I started painting, but I was impatient.
Next I took a bottle of brown paint and used it to draw a rough outline of a tree. Then I used my hand to spread out the paint creating a trunk, branches, and roots.
Once I had the tree, I added the kids' hand prints one by one. On a paper plate I put a big blob of brown paint for the palm, and four tiny blobs of red, orange, yellow, and green for the fingers. I carefully helped the kids dip their hands in the paint, and then used a brush to spread the brown all the way around their palms before pressing them onto the fabric. We have too many hands to put them all in a row, so some had to go on top of the others. I put the little kids' hands up high in the hopes that they would look like they were farther away in the background as opposed to just floating in the air.
I finished off the turkeys with a smaller brush and a few details like feet and beaks. I also used a tiny brush to add in the kids' initials into their turkeys so that in the future we'd be able to tell who made which bird.
After the birds, I added leaves. As you can tell, they are just fingerprints in fall colors. I kept going adding leaves until it looked perfect, and then I added a few more until it didn't. At that point I realized the turkeys were blending in with the tree, so I outlined them in black. It isn't exactly great, but it was better than having them be invisible.
Lastly I had my daughter write the words We are grateful for family in the corner. I could have written them myself, but then I would have no one to blame it on if it turned out looking weird.
I wanted to hang it up right away, but the paint was still wet. So I decided to iron it to see if it would dry faster. I put a big piece of butcher paper over top of it and then ironed it. This is not a good idea. But I did it anyway. After it was dry, I taped the fabric tight around the back of the frame, and ta da!!!
Not too bad right? I mean it's not the best thing ever (the photo really doesn't do it justice- in real life the handprints look a lot more like turkeys and a lot less like bloody handprints), but it's not too shabby. It was fun, it was easy, and if I can do it, you can do it. Good luck!
Marcia
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