Easy Handprint Calendar

I put this calendar together for less than $2! I decided to make two at once. I figure, since my boys' hands are painted, I might as well make doubles. However, I will be honest and say that you'll probably need a lot of patience, as my kids didn't enjoy sitting down to make the handprints all in one sitting. My 18 month old did handprints for 6 of the months, but it took two afternoons. I was able to get my 5 year old to do it in one afternoon, but it was a challenge to keep him on task, as well as the paint on the table and water from spilling. 

Here are the materials you need:

• patience...I'm not kidding!
• $1.00 calendar (from the dollar store) size 12x12"
• 12 pieces of white cardstock
• Paper trimmer or scissors
• Corner punch (optional)
• Single hole punch
• Ink (optional for inking the edges of the cardstock before putting it down on the scrapbook paper)
• Various colors of paint
• 12 pieces of 12x12 scrapbook paper
• Adhesive (I suggest repositionable) or glue
• Little hands
• bowl for washing hands
• towel for drying hands
• Ideas for handprints for each month: I got my ideas from E is Explore. 

Here is a photo of the final products. I put my kids handprints onto the white cardstock, then cut them down into various sizes and adhered to the 12x12 scrapbook pages. Then just adhered the scapbook pages to the calendar pages. You just need to take care to cover the original calendar's photos, then use a hole punch so you can still hang the entire project when you're done.

Jan: snowflakes
Feb: hearts
March: 4 leaf clover
April: Earth
May: Butterfly
June: Fish
July: Flag
August: Sun

I love the idea of using my kids handprints (and footprints for that matter) as a way to give gifts. Last year I used a footprint of each family member to make penguin snowman that we framed and gave to Dad. This year, its the calendar. 

September: box of crayons

October: Pumpkin/Jack-O-Lantern

November: Turkey

December: Christmas Tree

The whole process should be rather intuitive once you see my photos but here are my tips. 

• Make the handprints of one kid at a time, but think about the colors and the order in which you use them. For example, if you use the green for the September crayon box, you can also do the December christmas tree. 
• I kept a shallow bowl of water and towel near by so we could rinse our hands in between handprints. 
• With toddlers, undress them. Their skin washes better than any smock you could ever find! God did a good job, no need to try and improve it! 

• Construct and assembly the calendar with an assembly line mentality. Make all the prints at one time, pick out all the papers at one time, crop the handprints, adhere the handprints, then adhere the scrapbook paper to the calendar.
• To make this as simple as possible, I purchased cheap $1 calendars, and used thin outdated 12x12 scrapbook paper I already had and highly unlikely to ever be used. The scrapbook paper actually strengthens the "cheapness" of the calendar, and I'm happy with the final product.   

• Use the hole punch to punch holes in the top of the calendar, but beware, because of the added thickness, you may not be using the previous holes as a guide! I suggest you hold the calendar up as if you were going to hang it, to be sure you've got the holes lined up with the previous month. Use each previous month as the guide for the next.   

After the year is up, I plan on using these handprint pages as part of my kids scrapbooks! Double duty...cool huh? 

Share And Remember has a great post about making a calendar, be sure to check it out.