Fall Hand Print Tree

Welcome to part 6 of 30 Fun Ideas for Fall!

This post was sponsored by WaterWipes as part of an Ambassador Program for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own. I received complimentary products to facilitate my review.

Prestyn and I recently had a few friends over to have a play date and make fall themed hand print art. These were super fun but really messy. I was so happy to have WaterWipes available for clean up and so were the other moms. Here is the tutorial for this adorable keepsake craft:

Fall Hand Print Tree Tutorial

Supplies:

White card stock paper
Finger paint
Paint brushes (round and flat brushes)
Black paint marker
WaterWipes for cleanup

I also used a coated table cloth to make clean up a little easier.

First, you will want to paint your child’s hand with a mixture of yellow, orange and red finger paint. We used one brush for each color so that we could do this part quickly. This is where the play date aspect came in really handy. We did one child at a time, so we had many hands to help with the project. When you are ready to make the hand prints, try to place their hand down flat, but if that doesn’t happen that is okay too. Keep making hand (or fist) prints, adding paint to their hands as necessary until you get the tree foliage you want, or your child gets tired of it. Our paint was much thinner than we wanted but it worked out all right. Try getting Crayola brand for a better consistency.

Every baby had a different reaction to having the paint put onto their hands. It was fun to watch. Some immediately loved squishing it around on their hands and some seemed really unsure of what the heck we were doing to them at first. Once they realized how it worked, though, they all loved plopping the color onto the paper and they especially liked helping with the clean up. Since WaterWipes are chemical free you don’t need to worry when you have your little one help in the clean up process. Some of the babies who attended our play date have very sensitive skin (any scent at all can set them out in hives) and they had no problems with these wipes at all.

Once the kids are cleaned up and the finger paint is dry, you can use a black paint marker to draw a tree trunk and branches to fit your childs “leaves.” This is where you have a chance to get creative. You can do a simple silhouette or something more elaborate; whatever fits your artistic comfort level. Casey drew the tree trunks for all the kids after their paintings were dry. If you like the style of what she did, check back soon because Casey may offer the tree trunks as a printable that you can let your child add their hand print to. Once the trees were drawn, she used a sponge painter and brush to add the pumpkins and grass. To create the half hidden pumpkin shapes, use a piece of paper to protect the tree or tree root and once you’ve stamped the pumpkin, use a brush to spread the paint down to fill in the gaps. After the orange was dry, she used a small round brush and some green finger paint to add the grooves, stems and vines to each pumpkin. Finally, she used a medium-sized flat brush and more green finger paint to add the grass.

Here are the other ones that were made at the play group. Each is unique and they are all beautiful.

Our guests walked away with a unique fall keepsake and free WaterWipes to try at home. I think everyone enjoyed their play date and they said they were impressed with how well the WaterWipes cleaned up the finger paint mess.