Handprint Memories

This year for all the grandparents (Brady has eight, broken into five different sets) for Christmas, we decided it would be really cool to go to a paint-your-own pottery place and make hand print plates using Brady's hand. When we were little, we did this in plaster at preschool and the spray painted them gold. My mom still has them in her computer room on his china cabinet, so that helped with this idea.

Brady liked having the paint on his hands. Since we had to repeat this process several times, he learned pretty quickly how it worked and even would reach for the sponge in the paint to put in it on himself.

The hardest part was probably getting him to spread his fingers each time to get a good hand print on the plate. The woman helping us was really impressed with how well he did. We made eight total plates and she said in the time it took to put his hand on all eight, most kids only get one done at his age.

This was what they looked like as the finished product. I wrote his name, the year, and his age on each plate. What they looked like right after Brady put his hand on them is at the top of the post. After the glazing, it took on a darker color.

We completely bought them out of the round plates, so for ours, we decided that we'd do a square plate since all of our dinner plates are white squares and it would fit our style the best. I bought stands for all of them, so they could be displayed by ourselves and each set of grandparents. We also got one for Brady so he can have it when he gets older.

They were a pretty big hit with the grandparents.