Baby Handprint Crafts

Make a Baby Handprint T-shirt

A baby handprint t-shirt is a great gift for anyone who knows your newborn. Give yourself about 90 minutes to make one or more t-shirts. Here's what you'll need:

- Paint. You'll need paint that is child safe, will wash off, and will stick to fabric and withstand a washing machine. Crayola Portfolio Series Acrylic Paint, sold at MisterArt.com, is a good choice. It holds its color very well, and can be diluted, so you can control the flow of the paint better.
- A "Blank" or plain white t-shirt. These are available at any department store. Wherever you get your t-shirt, you might want to get one that doesn't cost too much, because its easy to make mistakes with a wet baby's hand. Also, consider getting more than one: making several extra t-shirts takes only a minute once you've got all the materials assembled.
- A sponge or a brush to apply the paint to your baby's feet
- A small container for the paint
- Optional: a dish of water to dilute the paint to make it flow better. The Crayola paint mentioned above can be diluted eight to one.


Practice making footprints and handprints before you imprint the t-shirts. Try painting with the paint on a few blank sheets of paper to get a sense of how thick or thin you want the paint to be. Then try painting your baby's foot or hand and doing a few test impressions on a piece of paper. Once you've got a system down, get the t-shirt in a convenient place for stamping, paint your baby's foot or hand, and stamp away.

Be sure to let the paint dry thoroughly before you test its sureness. Also, try to make the footprints on places on the t-shirt where the fabric doesn't bend or stretch too much. Paint isn't as flexible as fabric.



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