Father's Day Craft

Now that Tom's parents are grandparents, they have become incredibly sappy. And I just love to indulge this new personality trait of theirs. It's funny how easily I can make their day with the littlest things (like sending a quick cell phone pic of Sly to his Grammy, and making her cry!). It also makes for easy and enjoyable gift-giving. I finally get to indulge my urge to be a little bit creative, we get to save money on store-bought gifts, and the grandparents are tickled beyond words at the unique homemade presents. Everyone wins!

So here's what Sly and I made for his Grandad (Tom's father) for Father's Day. I was inspired by something I found online, and decided to tweak it a bit.

Materials:
Washable paint ($2-3)
Wooden cut-out (pre-painted is easier. Costs $0.50)
Craft paper
Magnets
Ribbon
Glue
Mod Podge
Finepoint Sharpie marker


We already had everything besides the paint and the wooden star, so I barely spent anything on this project.

I had originally planned to have Sly made a hand-print directly onto the wooden star, but that was not working out at all. Why did I believe it would be easy to get a baby's handprints?? He would eagerly spread his fingers for me when I dipped his hands into the paint, but as soon as I tried to get him to leave a print on the star, he'd curl them up! Or he'd open them but then start wiggling his hands or slapping, and making a huge mess. I washed the paint off and dried the star about three times before I finally admitted that it wasn't going to work. I realized we would need to make a number of candidate prints, and choose the best - so we switched to using leftover card stock. For each print, I had to coax his fingers open and then quickly press his hand down, and hope that the whole thing didn't smear in the process. We must have made 20 handprints (not all shown below) before I was satisfied that one of them might be use-able.

I cut out the best one, and Mod Podge'd it onto the star cutout (after I'd written the amazingly corny little message on with Sharpie)

When it dried, I added a little ribbon on one of the fingers.

And two magnets on the back so it can go up on the fridge!



It didn't take much time, and it came out well. And it's so perfectly sappy - they are going to love it!