Christmas Thumbprint Craft for Kids

We are into the fourth week of the Savvy Sassy Moms Holiday Blog Hop, and I'm a host along with these lovelies:

Amy Gene at O'Leary Love
Angela at Playing with Words
Carrie Beth and Jen at Magnolia Mamas
Sara at Running from the Law

The topic for this week? Holiday Crafts for Kids. RIGHT UP MY ALLEY, so let's get to it and be sure to link up at the end of this post with your own ideas.

One of the easiest crafts I've done with my kids is the 'thumbprints as Christmas lights' idea you'll see all over Pinterest. I have done many-a-thumbprint crafts each year for grandparent gifts and let's just say that some of them have not turned out as great as this one. I think simple is better, and my little Picassos always need some guidance with these if I want them to resemble anything like the original Pinterest inspiration.

So here you go, a string of lights composed of those cherished little finger prints:

We've made these a few times, but my best pictures are from our first round a few years ago. I have a lot of extra 4x6" photo paper laying around, so I decided to use that for this project (easy to make it fit in a frame!). We used acrylic paints that you can find in any craft store (my favorite is Michaels!)


I let Truman dip his fingers into the paints and spread out four photo papers for him to use. We got a little wild at first, quite 'abstract' if you will.


I found that we had the best luck if I helped guide his finger down into a specific path, like a wavy line of lights. Then I drew the actual string and the little bases of the lights, added his name and the date, and voila! The grandparents can set this out with their holiday decor for a festive and personalized gift. I should have made myself a copy, perhaps I will this year!

Other ideas (a.k.a. Thank you, Pinterest!):

Christmas Wreaths: just glued the photo paper onto Christmas scrapbooking paper.


Christmas Scene (warning, this was quite involved. I used actual ink pads and got decent results but meh).


Thumbprint 'love from afar': I love this one! I cut out little states that I found online for free, then used the remaining paper as my actual template. So the kids were fingerprinting right up against the border of the paper from my state cut out (does this make sense?). I had the kids each use two colors and created a little key below the states to show whose adorable finger print is whose. The hearts are paper punches and our long-distance brothers love these in a frame for a gift.



I need some fresh ideas for our 'crafty' gifts this year, and Pinterest is showing me a lot of the same old stuff so far. So now it's your turn to share your ideas with our link up, and I can't wait to see your posts!

Readers need to:

• Link up their favorite holiday craft for kids by putting the URL and name of their blog post into the InLinkz widget below.
• Visit 3-5 other blogs in the Holiday Blog Hop and leave a comment on their posts.
• Share this Holiday Blog Hop with your friends and readers on social media using the #SavvySassyHoliday hashtag.
• Come back next week for the Holiday Drinks theme!
  
  

An InLinkz Link-up