Fun Ideas for Fingerprint Crafts
5 August 2010
Author: Karen Bulmahn
Moms everywhere - I assume that on many occasions you have encountered your children’s fingerprints in places you’d rather not find them. It is also safe to say that the majority of the time it takes a little extra “elbow grease” to make them disappear. Although cleaning is a part of life, (especially with younger kids), children do grow up, learn to wash their hands, and the days of scrubbing the fingerprints off the walls or windows will lessen. Although this task seems like yet another chore to add to the list of things to do, stop and think about how precious those little prints really are and how wonderful it would be to “capture” them while they are still small. Children’s fingerprint crafts are the perfect solution to help you cherish those tiny little fingerprints forever.
Fingerprint Art Ideas:
- A great way to include children in your hobby of scrapbooking is to give them a sheet of paper and washable ink pads. Allow them to create a collage of handprints and fingerprints, and then use the “masterpiece” as a background patterned paper for a layout. They can use multiple colors that coordinate with photos and create borders on photo mats or around the entire edge of the page. Find a unique poem or quote about children’s hands, handprints or fingerprints and use it along with their fingerprint art. This idea can be used for a scrapbook page or a framed picture.
- If your children enjoy drawing, after putting fingerprints on paper help them create fingerprint people, animals or objects as shown in this “Fingerprint Family Tree.” All of the members of the family have fingerprint heads (different sizes can be achieved by using different fingers), and the rest of their bodies are drawn as stick people.
- Your children can use fingerprint crafts to create Christmas cards for family members. Lightly draw a circle on the front of a card and with green ink have them work their fingerprints around the circle to create a wreath. Using just the tip of their pinky finger they can add red berries!
- Consider letting them add fingerprint crafts to something besides paper. This “Mommy and Me” wooden picture frame shows flowers created by using the child’s fingerprints. Any title can be written on the frame, which makes it an easy but sentimental gift for family members.
- While the children are working on their own fingerprint crafts, take the opportunity to create Fingerprint Safety Cards. Make a set for each child, label them, and put them in a special place for emergency purposes. When creating a fingerprint card, it is best to start with clean fingers since the more they stamp, the more “smeared” their fingerprints become.
Be sure to get a full stamp of each finger using a dark color of ink. In today’s world it is better to be safe than sorry, and if an emergency situation should ever arise, you’ll be glad you took the time to make the safety cards.
Kids will always find a way to get dirty; that is a given! Think of how much fun they will have creating their very own fingerprint crafts, and having a constructive reason to get messy. Hopefully some of the suggestions in this article will help you put down your cleaning cloth and see your children’s fingerprints from a different perspective. Years from now you and your kids can look back on all the fun you had in creating these projects. Who would have thought that fingerprint crafts would turn out to be such a meaningful and memorable way to spend time with your children while creating keepsakes at the same time?