Tag Archives: craft

Hand & Footprint Canvas Craft

Happy Mother’s Day!

This year for our moms, I decided to do a hand made craft with the kids. If you’ve seen my kid crafts before, you know I usually like them to be as adult hands-off as possible. This one is a little different. I saw this awesome idea on Fabulessly Frugal & immediately wanted to do something similar for our moms.

Hand & Footprint Canvas Craft - Mrs. Dessert Monster

This is a simple, but multi-step (multi-day for me) project. Cupcake is 3 years old & loves painting. I had her paint two canvases; one 8×10 & one 9×11 just to mix it up. She needed a little bit of assistance to cover the entire canvas with paint without leaving white areas or muddling the colors too much. Once that was done, we let the paint dry over night. The next day, we did Cupcake’s hand print as the ‘O’ in LOVE. To be safe & reduce the chance of smudging, we let that dry overnight, too. On a different day, we did Blue’s footprints as the ‘V’. He was 7 months old at a time & it was more difficult than I was expecting! If your child is older, this could be a one day project. Once those dried (I think I did it the same day this time), I painted the ‘L’ & ‘E’. I also painted the edges of the canvas black to make it look more finished. Finally, when everything was dry dry dry, I wrote their names & ages on the back & they were ready to be gifted for Mother’s Day!

Hand & Footprint Canvas Craft - Mrs. Dessert Monster paint

I mailed one to my mom in Florida, & the other we gave to my mother in law Mother’s Day weekend. I love that this is a kid’s craft that also makes for adorable decor. I know the kids will be excited to go to their grandmas’ houses & see their art on the walls. Cupcake will be, anyhow. Blue is still excited about anything & everything, since he is an infant!

Hand & Footprint Canvas Craft

  • canvas, 8×10 or larger (the larger the easier it is to work with)
  • paint, such as acrylic, in as many colors as you’d like plus black
  • paint brushes
  • clean-up supplies such as wipes/towels – especially if there’s a baby involved!
  1. Paint your entire canvas using as many colors as you’d like.
  2. Once your painted canvas is dry, get black paint on your child’s hand. Press their hand on the canvas where the letter O would be in the word LOVE.
  3. Once the hand print is reasonably dry (or totally dry if you are working with toddlers & babies), get black paint on your child’s feet one at a time & press on canvas to form the letter V.
  4. Once the V is reasonably dry, use a brush to paint on the letters L & E. If desired, paint the edges of the canvas black.
  5. Finally, once everything is completely dry, write the child’s name or have them sign the back. Your beautiful art gift is ready!
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Fall Pumpkin Toddler Craft

If you’ve seen my post about toddler cards, you know that this mami doesn’t want to put a lot of work into a craft that’s supposed to be done by a toddler. So when I saw a cute little fabric pumpkin at Target I thought to myself, “this would be perfect for Cupcake to decorate – with minimal help from me!”

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I love this project because it is good for almost all toddler development stages & even older! Toddlers (ages 1-3) run the gamut from just starting to walk to almost ready to read, but if your kid can hold a marker, they can decorate a small pumpkin. It doesn’t even have to be a fabric one like this – it can be a craft pumpkin or even a small real one! Just use an appropriate type of marker for whatever the surface of your pumpkin is.

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Cupcake had so much fun coloring all over her pumpkin. She loves when I let her play with markers. She particularly enjoys putting the caps back on.

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You’ll notice I gave her permanent and dry erase markers (which won’t wipe off since this pumpkin’s fabric). Her washable markers are still in some box around here…

The bright side is that her art work is permanent! 😉

The only input I had was giving her the markers one by one & pointing out white places on the pumpkin for her to color on some more. After she was done, I took that permanent marker & wrote her name & the date. Then we went outside for a little photo shoot!

You can kind of see that the leaves are actually changing color around here! Just a few more weeks until cooler temperatures in Georgia. As a Floridian, I am nervous & excited!

This cute little pumpkin is going on our bookshelf. Having just moved, I wasn’t going to pull out much of the fall stuff we have stored in the garage. I’m happy to have a little pumpkin flare around the apartment & it’s extra special that it was made by my daughter.

Fall Pumpkin Toddler Craft

  • small pumpkin (fabric, craft, or real!)
  • markers (I suggest fall colors like green, brown, and orange, but if you want a rainbow pumpkin that sounds fun, too!)
  • adorable toddler
  1. Supervise your toddler while they color on the pumpkin.
  2. When they’re done, write their name on it if you’d like. Done!

Toddler Cards For Any Occasion

Cupcake’s birthday is in January, so last year she got to enjoy all of her first holidays in order. This means that I got to do all of the fun handprint/footprint crafts for with her.

Footprint Valentines day heart? check. Footprint Father’s day craft? check. Handprint turkey for Thanksgiving? check. Handprint AND footprint clay ornaments for Christmas? check.

Now that she’s no longer an infant, I just don’t find it as cute. Let’s face it – the gift recipients know who really made those things. ME. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really cute ideas on Pinterest. But most of them are just work for mom.

Cupcake is 17 months old – old enough to want to do things on her own, but not old enough to really understand that we are making a gift for someone else. So even if I wanted to, it’d be pretty challenging to get her to give me a handprint or a footprint this year. So strong willed, & she’s not even 2! Say a prayer for me.

For Father’s day I searched for ideas of something she could make her daddy that was minimal work for me while being a little more thoughtful than just her scribbling on a piece of paper. I didn’t really come across any ideas I liked, but inspiration came from Cupcake herself. She likes to color & paint all by herself (heavily supervised, of course!) & her absolute favorite thing in the world right now is stickers. That gave me an idea.

It sounded too simple, but what if Cupcake really could make a card for daddy by herself with minimal guidance from me?

Toddler Cards for Any Occasion Made By Toddlers - Mrs. Dessert Monster

Sometimes, the K.I.S.S. principle really is the best. Keep it simple, silly!

Cupcake had a lot of fun painting this card for daddy.Toddler Cards for Any Occasion Made By Toddlers - Mrs. Dessert Monster

Once the paint was dry, we added stickers. I let her add as many hearts as she wanted before giving her the sticker letters, one at a time in order, to spell DADA. That’s really all of the involvement I had, minus making sure she didn’t get paint everywhere! Oh, and writing her name & the date on the back!

This craft is so easily adaptable for any occasion! Use different colored paper, paint, or markers depending on your target audience & time of year! It’s infinitely customizable. You can let your toddler add as much or as little embellishment as you wish. The only ‘must’ is sticker letters. As long as your toddler has the motor skills to put stickers on a paper, they can do this craft!

Toddler Cards for Any Occasion Made By Toddlers - Mrs. Dessert Monster

My hubby really loved receiving this card from our sweet daughter. She handed it to him herself! It might sound silly, but the fact that he can tell she really made it (as opposed to mommy) makes it more special!

Toddler Cards For Any Occasion

  • card stock – any color!
  • paint, crayons, and/or markers
  • sticker letters
  • optional: more stickers, glitter, paper scraps, or any other embellishment you can trust your toddler with, plus glue if necessary!
  1. Have your toddler paint or color on the piece of card stock. If you use paint, you will have to factor in drying time. (I used paint & had it be a 2-day project. Twice the fun!)
  2. Have your toddler stick on any other embellishments. I gave Cupcake heart stickers, since this was a Father’s Day card & she ‘hearts’ her daddy. Use holiday themed stickers to be extra festive!
  3. The last step is to give your toddler sticker letters one at a time & in order of whatever word(s) you are trying to get them to spell. I minimally guided Cupcake on putting the DADA stickers next to each other. I suspect that in another month or two, I wouldn’t even have to do that! Then, write your toddler’s name & the date on the back.
  4. Have your toddler give the card to loved ones & watch their heart melt!

 

Wedding Shadow Box

A few weekends ago I finally got around to making the last of my post-wedding crafts.

Shortly after our wedding last December, I bought a shadow box for wedding memories. I knew I wanted to display our guest book records along with it – more on that later.

Wedding Shadow Box - Mrs. Dessert Monster

So, I got to work on my shadow box on this free Saturday I had. It was a wonderful Saturday, one that had absolutely no plans or schedules. My husband & I got to stay home all day. We did some stuff around the house. I did some crafty things. We watched college football. We grilled up some steaks for dinner. I baked brownies for dessert. It was very relaxing & much needed.

I had been saving extras of all of my wedding stationery, ornament favors, & cake decorations for this shadow box. I also saved my bouquet – no fancy preservation or anything. My mom grabbed it for me the day of the wedding & it has been sitting in a mason jar on my vanity for months, drying nicely.

Wedding Shadow Box - Mrs. Dessert Monster

Obviously it isn’t as bright & vibrant as when the flowers were alive, but it still looked pretty good.

Red Bouquet - Mrs. Dessert Monster

I didn’t want to use the entire bouquet, just one or two of each flower. So I disassembled the bouquet & made my own little mini arrangement before using the original ribbon to wrap it up.

Wedding Shadow Box - Mrs. Dessert Monster

Stanley kitty was hanging out with me while I assembled everything.

Wedding Shadow Box - Mrs. Dessert Monster

I love how it turned out!

Wedding Card Booklet

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We finally finished our thank you cards a couple weeks ago. It only took us like 2 1/2 months! Now I can move on to wedding crafts I’ve been dying to do. The first of which was this wedding card booklet 🙂

I got the idea of off Pinterest (of course) & it immediately appealed to me because I LOVE cards. Opening up all of our cards on Christmas morning (the day after we got back from our honeymoon) was very meaningful to my husband & me – & not because some of them had money in them!

I bought some binder clips, gathered the cards & my other supplies & got to work. The process was fairly straight forward. I found the tallest & the widest cards to use for the dimensions.

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I love that we got a bunch of cards from Italy!

Then I arranged the cards small to large.

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I created the cover from some hard cardboard & leftover out of town bags I had.

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Then I just hole-punched the cards (It was actually harder than I anticipated to ensure the holes were centered and/or not cutting anything important out) & put them all together!

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We got a lot more cards than I thought, so my booklet is kind of fat, but I love it.

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Much more fun to go through this way than just thrown in a box somewhere!