Hand Print Christmas Tree

When Peyton was almost 3 years old, I was ambitious and we made this hand print Christmas tree:

And he loved it.

Somehow I packed it away carefully every year. And it still looks great and he's always so happy when we bring it out.

This year Ella is almost 4. We still hadn't made one for her, because somewhere along the line I lost the ambition that made me want to cut out 50,000 hand prints. But it was time for me to step up and do the right thing. She wanted one just like Peyton's, except with pink and purple ornaments. Of course.

Sometimes I'm all: "Yay! Crafts! Let's make something big!" And sometimes that's just dumb. These hand print trees are the perfect example of my stupidity. I love that they are really big - almost 3 feet tall, but the cutting, OH THE CUTTING! and the almost-blisters from all the cutting. The lesson being, you may want to make yours on a smaller scale. But since I had made Peyton's so big, you know, back in my ambitious days, I had to make Ella's the same size so that they couldn't accuse me of favoritism in therapy later. It's all about protecting myself.

Hand Print Christmas Tree

Materials

1 large piece poster paper

Lots of green card stock (depending on how big you make the tree)

1 piece brown card stock

1 piece yellow card stock

2-3 pieces colored card stock (for the ornaments - use the colors your child likes)

Pencil

Markers or crayons

Scissors

Glue Stick

Cut the poster paper into a large triangle. The bigger the triangle, the more hand prints you will need to cut out. I'm not sending you any blister salve should you choose to make a big tree, dang!

Cut a rectangle out of the brown card stock and glue it to the bottom of the triangle to make the tree trunk.

Cut a star out of the yellow card stock and set it aside.

Give your child the colored card stock and markers or crayons let the decorating begin!

For the younger kids: give your child the entire sheet of paper to mark on, then you can cut out circles when she's done.

For the older kids: Ella was able to trace a glass, cut the circle, and then decorate. I helped her out with some of the cutting, but she was pretty proud of what she accomplished on her own.

Trace your child's hands onto a piece of green card stock. Stack as many pieces of green card stock as you can and start cutting. We used three shades of green, because we're fancy like that.

Start at the bottom of the white poster paper triangle, and glue on a row of hand prints. You'll want them to overlap a little so that no white shows. Continue to glue rows of hand prints until you cover the entire white triangle.