Give a hand

When it comes to creating I typically go for diy-ing home decor and draw the line at super crafty things like scrap booking and knitting.  But we have had so many gray and rainy days lately that I thought creating homemade valentine's with my little dude would be a good indoor outlet for his crazy boy energy.  I turned to the queen of craft herself, Martha Stewart, for inspiration.  Now often when I peruse her sight I wonder who has the time and patience for her tedious crafts.  This time however, I struck inspiration gold with these sweet hand valentines.  Next we took a trip to our local Michael's for supplies.  

We found these cute rubber stamps on sale for 50¢ each.  The colorful ink pads were only a dollar a piece.  Stamping is a good activity for toddler's cubby little hands, and I told T to press as hard as he could on each valentine.  He thought this was hilarious and super fun.

We used construction paper to trace his hand with pencil and make a template.  Then I used that to cut out a bunch of hand shaped valentines.  

Maybe the scissors I have suck, but I found it was much easier to cut out the little digits using the small beauty scissors shown on the bottom.

I thought that sayings with hand references or puns were what really made these valentines cute.  I tried to think of songs with these references and came up with "I want to hold your hand" from T's favorite band the Beatles, as well as "you really got a hold on me", "hold on to what we've got", "take my hand", and the pun from Martha "you're so hand-some."

First I tried writing the messages with silver pen on the pink hand and it looked terrible with the rubber stamping.  So did the fine point sharpie that I used on the red one.

I settled on pencil, and it gave me that sweet kid craft look I was going for. 

T even personalized a few with his fingerprints.

This was a really fun and not very messy project.  But you could personalize the hands anyway you want, paint, glitter... go nuts.  I just loved being able to use the shape of his sweet little hand before it isn't considered sweet and little anymore, which at the rate he is growing will be next year!

oxx Dion