One down, Five to Go

Alright, I admit it.  I tend to take on more projects than I have time for.  I get it from my mom.  She's been retired for a whole two weeks now, and has remodeled her bedroom and bathroom, sanded and refinished her kitchen floor, made Christmas presents, etc.  I think the busybodyness runs in the family.

I've decided to make a bunch of our Christmas presents this year.  With me not having a paycheck right now, it only made sense to keep our Christmas budget a little smaller.  Besides, it was a good excuse to get crafty.

There are currently five projects I am working on finishing, and I will post them when they are done.  Here's the first one:

Amelia's hands are adorably small, so I made an ornament out of her handprints to give to the Grandmas this year.  They turned out pretty cute, and were relatively simple to make.  I say relatively because Amelia still clenches her hands up most of the time, so I had to have a helper to get her hand to lay flat.  Thankfully, Melissa's daughter is 6 months old, and we made some of her hands, too, so I had assistance.

So I present to you, my dear readers, my first tutorial for Christmas crafts:

Baby Handprint Ornament

Supplies:

glass ornament balls big enough for your baby's hand

clear embossing ink

embossing powder

embossing gun

q-tips

paper plates

paper towels

baby wipes

ribbon

extra adult to assist

The project was simple.  We used the clear embossing ink with a roller applicator to get the girls' hands covered, then stamped their handprints onto the glass ornaments.  I sprinkled the powder over the ink, making sure the area was covered.  Before I used the embossing gun, I used a q-tip to clean up the handprint and get the extra powder off.  After they were embossed, I tied a small ribbon to the top, and wrote the year and Amelia's name on the back with a sharpie.

I didn't get pictures of the process, because there was a small mishap with the ink spilling, and I was busy cleaning up as we went along.  Here are the supplies, though:

The paper plates were handy because I sprinkled the powder onto the balls while holding them over the plates, and I was able to use less powder because I used the excess powder for the next ball.

I think they came out pretty cute!