Handprint art

First, my apologies for these pics. It's really hard to photograph artwork behind glass, but I wanted you to see the finished product in the frame.

Taylor and I made this gift for my mom for Mother's Day, but I never got around to posting it. With the holidays approaching I thought now would be a good time to share this project with you.

To create this gift, I had Taylor press her hand into a puddle of acrylic paint and then I pressed her hand onto white cardstock. Tip: With little ones, it really helps to have 2 adults help with this. One to hold the child's hand still on the paper, while the other presses down firmly to ensure even coverage. Then lift the child's had straight up off the paper to ensure the image doesn't smear. We repeated that with each color shown. I then cut out each handprint.

Next, I cut the flower pot shape out of brown felt. Then I cut the stems out of grossgrain ribbon and cut the leaf shapes out of green flannel scraps that I had. I machine stitched the ribbons to the 12x12 piece of cardstock. Then I stitched the leaves so that the stitching resembled the veins of a leaf. Next, I added a very small amount of stuffing to the back side of the felt flower pot and stitched it to the cardstock. Finally, I adhered the hand prints to the top of each stem with "pop dots" or 3D foam dots. (people call 'em different things). As a finishing touch I added a distressed piece of cardboard along with the saying "Happy Mother's Day 2009, Love Taylor".