Exploding Handprint Christmas Trees

 

The other day, E wanted to do another early morning craft. When I asked her what she had in mind, she said “Handprints!”

We got out the paint and ended up with exploding handprint Christmas trees! I’d envisioned ornaments ON the trees but E preferred putting them wherever she wanted – almost like a solar system of Christmas ornaments 😉

 

 

(E was 36 months old.)

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You’ll need:

• Tempera paint and/or liquid watercolors.
• Paintbrush.
• Construction paper.
• Glitter glue (optional).
• Bowls for the paint.

 

 

 

We gathered our materials together, and I started out painting most of E’s hand green and the tips of her middle and ring fingers brown with liquid watercolors. I skipped her thumb and the tip of her index finger. That was the extend of my involvement in this project.

{Like our other recent before breakfast handprint craft, Handprint Turkeys, I wasn’t up for color mixing this early in the morning, but if you have green and brown tempera paint or don’t mind mixing the colors, you can definitely just use tempera. The advantage is that it doesn’t dry as quickly and usually gives better coverage and crisper prints.}

 

  

I asked her to keep her fingers together, and E made a nice print.

 

 

Then she got started on her fingerprint ornaments. Dipping your finger in paint is fun every time 🙂

 

 

I didn’t interfere with her choice of placement.

 

 

She placed a few fingerprints directly on the tree

 

 

but mostly went with the ornament explosion theme 😉

I’d gotten out a round foam brush because I didn’t immediately realize that it would be too big for ornaments on the tree {told you it was early 😉 }. E saw it and decided to try it out.

 

 

 

When she was satisfied with her work, E asked to do another handprint on another sheet of paper.

She decided that this one needed some glitter.

She tried different ways of getting the glitter glue out of the bottle. It wasn’t easy, and once she had a couple of spots, she moved on to make lots of foam brush ornaments.

 

 

 

 

She finished her second sheet with some free painting around the handprint

 

 

and was even inspired to pull out her sketch book to expand on the theme.

 

 

 

We didn’t end up with traditional handprint Christmas trees but I loved E’s ideas and her exploration, and she really enjoyed it. The pictures hang on our wall now 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Have you made your own handprint Christmas trees? Which technique did you use? Where did your ornaments end up? Tell me all about it in the comments!

 

 

 

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