SMOCKtributor: Lucy Baker
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve referred to my kids as my ‘two little monsters’. In a loving way. Mostly. Sometimes. So I drew inspiration from their cheeky sides and we enjoyed some TOGETHER ART making monster handprints! It was such a fun hands-on project that both my 10 month old and my 4 year old enjoyed equally.
What you need:
- A4 white cardstock
- Brightly colored paint (we used Crayola Washable Neon Paints)
- Plastic plate
- Large paint brush
- Googly eyes
- Glue (we used a glue gun but anything with a decent stick will work)
- Markers (we used UNI Paint Pens)
- Some little monsters!
How it works:
Start off by letting your kids choose which color
they’d like their monster to be. Big bro knew straight away that he wanted to
be a bright green monster, little sis took a little longer throwing all the
paint pots around until only one was left standing on her high chair- bright
pink! Pour a blob of paint onto a nice flat plate and spread it around a little
with the paint brush.
Big bro went first, carefully squishing his hand in the paint. I used the brush to make sure his hand was well covered to get a good print. Then he pushed his hand on the right side of the landscape piece of white card. I gave him a little help to make sure all parts of his hand made contact with the card. I got big bro to do two handprints on separate pieces of card….. I’ll explain why shortly!
Now came the tricky part…… getting a bright pink handprint from a 10 month old baby! It really helped having baby sis sitting in her high chair with the tray attached in front of her. Big bro and I had to work well together for this process! I used the brush to paint her hand, on my signal big bro slipped the white card onto her tray, and as quickly as humanly possible I gently pushed her hand onto the card, leaving a gap from the green handprint. It was a tense moment for all involved!!
As I explained earlier, big bro did two copies
as I anticipated it might take a trial run with baby sis before we got a good
handprint. I was right! We did a second print for her and it came out much
better as she was a bit more aware of what to expect (and so was I!).
Before you relax and put the paints away, you
need to use fingerprints to make two small feet under the handprint. I made the
mistake of forgetting to do this and had to do it a little later! Thankfully
this was a much smoother process than doing the whole hand! We then waited an
hour or so to let the handprints dry.
The next part involves adding a mouth to the
monsters. I felt baby sis might not be quite up to that yet so I did hers for
her. We used UNI Paint Pens as they come out lovely and bold on the paint.
Black and silver looked really cool. Big bro did his own, making lots of ‘super
sharp’ teeth. We also drew on some little legs to connect the monster body to
the feet.
The final touch was adding all five googly eyes to each monster. We used slightly larger ones for big bro. He enjoyed placing them down on top of the blob of glue that I added from the glue gun. He was kind enough to do the same for baby sis’ monster too.
We left it all to dry for half an hour and there you have it....an adorable piece of art to remind you of the good old days when your kids were little monsters!
If you loved this project, be sure to check out her amazing blog and Instagram -- they are both packed full of creative play ideas conveniently organized into easy-to-navigate categories with step-by-step instructions that make it
as easy as possible for you to repeat with your pARTners in crime at home. Go check it out, friends! Thanks, Lucy!!
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