Every year I purchase an ornament for each member of the family. I try to pick something that fits with each person's interests that year. We did not get out of town to shop this year and our selection in town was slim, so I was struggling to find ornaments I liked.
While listening to the radio, I heard some one mention making ornaments by putting their children's hand prints on ball ornaments. It sounded like a great idea not only to use for our yearly ornaments, but to make as gifts for grandparents.
I envisioned doing this in red or green paint on a clear bulb, but couldn't find any of those locally either, so ended up with large gold and blue bulbs. My initial plan was to use red paint for the hand prints, but as I pictured it in my mind's eye I started to worry it would look like a gruesome bloody hand print, so we went with white instead.
Concerned that washable craft paint would chip off, we went with acrylic paints. I did not plan well and it was slightly disastrous--Big Brother shook his paint-covered hand (think dog after bath) while standing in the middle of the kitchen.
I had the kids dip one hand in the white paint, then I placed the bulb in the palm of their hand and had them curl their fingers up. This process was quite tricky. About half of the hand prints were too smeared to be recognizable (as I'm typing this, I realize I should have quickly washed the paint off before it dried so we could try again . . . . ah . . . . oh well).
I propped them on an egg carton to dry. When dry, I added a coordinating hanging ribbon and wrote each child's name and the year on the opposite side using a silver Sharpie.
We kept one set for ourselves and gave another set as a gift to Grandma and Grandpa.
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