hand prints

Apparently, when my first child was born I had a lot of time on my hands. I impressed her tiny hand into clay for a frame, I painted it and used her hand print to make a turkey on a Thanksgiving plate and I made hand prints for the grandparents. When my son came along, my daughter was still only 21 months and suddenly all that extra time evaporated. Fast forward four years and the poor little guy has no keepsake of his hand prints! There are tons of ideas on how to use hand prints in art work and design. Browse the internet, Etsy and Pinterest and you are sure to find lots of fun ideas like these:

http://www.chiccheapnursery.com/

http://funhandprintart.blogspot.com/2009/09/cute-fish-handprint-tile-keepsake.html

http://susanweinroth.typepad.com/a_little_bit_of_me/2011/04/hippity-hop.html

I thought it was about time to remedy my son's lack of hand print memories and figured a layout was the perfect way to do so. Lucky for me, I had the perfect story to tell about a book called The Kissing Hand that his teacher read to him on the first day of school.

I painted his hand with non toxic washable paint and gently pressed it onto white cardstock. I made about four impressions on a 12x12 piece of white cardstock so I could choose the best one! The story is actually about raccoons, but I thought the elephant with heart and little turtle (from the die cut sheet from the Animal Crackers for Boys collection) were too cute not to include.

and I left plenty of room to journal about the story and our connection to it:

I hope this gives you some ideas of how to include those little hand prints on your next project so we can always remember how small they were!

Supplies Used:

GCD Studios Animal Crackers for Boys patterned paper and Metal Rimmed Glass Brads

American Crafts Alphas

Papertrey Inc. White Cardstock