Our Projects — DIY Baby Hand Print Kit

Who says you need to buy an expensive kit to capture your baby's hand in hard plaster? We have an easy DIY recipe to make your child's hand print into a gift, ornament or decoration. Our particular recipe made five hand print ornaments, three with our baby's hand, and two of which we used to stamp our dogs' paws on. Depending on if you'd like to make smaller, larger, more or less ornaments, you might want to adjust the recipe.


DIY Baby Hand Print Kit

2 Cups Flour
1/2 Cup Salt
Water

Mixing Bowl
Cookie Sheet
Wax Paper
Rolling Pin
Straw or Pen Cap
Ribbon

Optional: Food Coloring, Paint and/or Spray Paint

Directions:

Mix together flour and salt in your mixing bowl with water until it's formed into a dough. You don't want to add too much water, so go slowly.

Take out dough, and roll it out flat using the rolling pin. Make sure that the dough is rolled thick enough to allow for your child's hand print to make an decent imprint without breaking through.

Using your cookie cutter, stamp the dough into the desired shapes. If you don't have a cookie cutter, you can use the bottom of a circular large cup or small bowl to trace your ornaments' shapes. I used a large heart shaped cookie cutter to get heart-shaped ornaments, and I was able to take the leftover scraps to re-cut them in to an extra ornament.

Take your child's hand (or dog's paw), and press it gently but firmly into the dough, being sure to push down each finger individually.

Use the pen cap or straw to poke a hole all the way through the top of each ornament.

Place each ornament on wax paper, and either place it in the oven at 150 degrees for an hour or two, or let it dry overnight at room temperature.

Once your ornaments are dry, you can decorate them. I chose to spray mine with silver spray paint. Let me know if you try this recipe. These ornaments make for great, meaningful and inexpensive gifts!