"Five Snowmen" Ornament

Last week, I saw this project on a message board on The Nest. I obviously don't yet have any children of my own with which to do things like this, but I thought it would make a super cute gift from Hunter to my brother and Kara.

Today, Trevor and Kara had to work so my mom was babysitting Hunter for the day. Michael and I took a drive over to my mom's house with a box of six ornaments in hand. I knew it was going to be a challenge to get Hunter's perfect little handprint onto an ornament, so I was prepared to have to try multiple times.

Hunter was in a pretty good mood, which helped. The way we set it up: I squirted some white acrylic paint onto a paper plate. Michael held Hunter. My mom was in charge of the ornaments, and I was responsible for paint application and straightening out his little hand to stick onto the ornament.

As expected, it took multiple tries. Probably 10-12, to be honest. We were working over my mom's kitchen sink, and when we messed one up, she immediately rinsed the ornament so that we'd be able to use it to try again. We went through the six ornaments really quickly (none of them good!), and had to pause for a minute so my mom could dry them off for another round. Thankfully, by then we had learned from trial and error and we were actually able to get two decent ones during our second pass. :)

A few tips in case anyone tries this: I found that if he had too much paint on his hand, the handprint looked like crap. Also, it worked best to hold the ornament still, spread out his fingers, and then "stamp" the hand around the ornament.

I let the handprint completely dry before doing any other decorating. From there, the first step was to fill in and round off the fingertips a little bit so that they could be made into faces. Using the white acrylic paint and a paint brush, I filled in the fingertips so that they were solid white. Again, I stepped away for a few hours and let that paint dry, too.

Using a black paint pen, I drew on the snowmen's eyes and mouths. Then I used a tiny paint brush and orange acrylic paint for the noses, and also for the scarves and hats. I used white paint pen to write Hunter's name and the year.

The only change I really made to this project was with the poem. The post I had seen said to include the poem in the box with the ornament. I really wanted to include the poem on the ornament, so on the opposite side from the snowmen/handprint, I wrote out the whole thing using white paint pen.

These aren't just five snowmen
as anyone can see.
I made them from my hand
which is a part of me.
Now each year, when you trim the tree
you'll look back and recall
the Christmas of 2009
when my hand was just this small.

The final touch was adding the "snow" with a paint brush and white acrylic paint.

Since we ended up with two ornaments with good handprints on them, I ended up decorating an extra one to give to my mom (Hunter's grandma!), too. I'm extremely happy with how they turned out.

A cute project if you have little ones around next Christmas! They make wonderful gifts and keepsakes for parents and grandparents.

Merry Christmas!