Christmas Crafts

Sometimes I get a little crafty. Usually, it turns out the complete opposite of what I intended or better yet, I don’t finish! 🙂

Inspired by a project I saw online last week and a hand print wreath my younger sister Rachel made for my parents while in school, I decided to stop at JoAnn’s on the way home from work to pick up some supplies to make our own hand print crafts.

The supplies:

JoAnn Fabric’s acrylic paint (8oz) – Christmas Green
JoAnn Fabric’s acrylic paint (2oz) – Bright Red
Folk Art acrylic paint (2oz) – Metallic Inca Gold
Folk Art acrylic paint (2oz) – Metallic Silver Sterling
foam brush
paint brushes
1 – 16×20 canvas (not pictured)
2 – 12×12 canvases (not pictured)

Note:
I bought two 8oz bottles of the green paint (pictured above) because I didn’t have a good feel for how much I was going to need. I’m not a huge fan of shopping during the Christmas rush so I didn’t want to run out mid-project. Also, I could only find “Christmas Green” in the big bottle size. In any event, two 8oz bottles is waaaay too much. I’m not sure we even used a third of one bottle. If I had more time and motivation, I’d probably return the extra bottle. You could probably get away with 2-3 of the 2oz bottles if you can find them in the correct color.

I didn’t take a picture of the canvases I bought but I got 3 packs of canvases (3 – 16x20s and 3 – 12x12s). The canvases were pretty cheap (maybe $20 for the 16x20s, maybe $12 for the 12×12?). This was mostly because I had little faith in my ability to do these crafts without having to do a “do over”. Honestly, having the extras on hand relaxed me enough to just jump into the project without worrying about the outcome. If it looked terrible, I had extras. Having extras on hand turned out to be good when I decided to make a 12×12 painting of my own to balance out the display on the wall.

I really like how our projects came out but I do have tips:
-Use the foam brush to get extra paint off the hands. You can see the prints more clearly on the canvas when there is less paint.

-Use two adults per child. It really helps to have one adult handling the paint/child and the other handling the canvas with clean hands.

-Outline lightly in pencil where you’d like hand prints to go. With the tree, we just kind flew by the seat of our pants. Luckily, it turned out okay. With the wreath, we drew a very light circle on the canvas so that Mike and I were both on the same page as to where we wanted Matthew’s hand to go.

-Outline lightly in pencil if you’re going to add any additional things to the canvas (like a star on the hand print tree). When I decided to do the ornament canvas, I printed 3 shapes from the computer, cut them out and then lightly traced them on the canvas. It was much easier for me to paint in/around the lines than it would have been to eyeball it. I did the same with the star for the tree.

-Don’t forget to label the canvas with the child’s name and the year!

How did we do it and how long did it take?
Night #1: Ian’s hand prints on a 16×20 canvas in the shape of a tree
Night #2: Matthew’s hand prints on a 12×12 canvas in the shape of a wreath
Night #3: I painted ornaments on a second 12×12 canvas
Night #4-5: I painted a star on the tree, I painted the silver “toppers” on the ornaments (multiple coats required to get an even, deep color)
Night #6: I did red dots on the wreath and painted “strings” on the ornament canvas
Night #7: I glued a red bow on the wreath and Mike hung the canvases

This could have been done in a much shorter time frame but we were squeezing it in after work and other obligations. Plus, I wanted to leave plenty of time to allow the paint to completely dry.

Finished product: