Hand Print Craft Book

Now that I am able to blog again I wanted to share a tutorial for a hand print book that I made for my nieces for Christmas. The idea was inspired by my two year old. I saw via pinterest an idea for making stamps out of those foam craft sheets cut in fun geometric shapes and glued to pieces of wood. I had some left over foam sheets from a craft night that we did to make stamped onsies for my friend Astrid’s little girl, so I decided to let the kids play with them one morning. I gave them each a sheet to come up with a shape for their own stamp. Jackson made a leaf and Isabel started to try and trace her hand. I thought that was such a great idea because I see so many cute hand print crafts, but I am not always up for busting out the paint/ink pads, getting out the paper towels, making sure paint doesn’t get all over everything etc etc. just to do a quick project. I will admit it is definitely fun to go all out on occasion and let the kids be as messy as can be, but sometimes I just want to make a quick card, or do a quick, mindless, minimal clean up activity with the kids. For those days I thought that a hand print stamp was the perfect idea! So while the family was together at Thanksgiving I traced everyone’s hands onto foam sheets. Then I cut them out and used my kids hand prints to trace fun shapes of different animals, and other objects on white printing paper.

I cut out my nieces hand prints, traced them onto some thicker foam sheets and glued them on the back side.

I took them to our local Copy Corner and had them make copies and bind them with a card stock cover. I figured the book itself would make a fun coloring book, and then the girls could use it as inspiration to make their own hand print art with their stamps.
I threw in a couple small ink pads and wha-la!
A fun, easy, hand made gift (All for under $3.00 a book!)