Mother's Day - Grandma Gifts

Happy Friday everyone! As Shannon said Monday, Joe and I hosted our 5th Annual Mother's Day brunch - my second as a mom. We have the menu pretty much down to a science, but this year an emergency call to the plumber was necessary to clear out a backed up drain. Nothing like a little drama to throw the day into a panic. Thankfully it was cleared very quickly and didn't really disrupt our festivities. 

Anyway, I have a post planned for one of our menu items, and another one for the gifts JJ gave all the moms in attendance, but I wanted to start with the Grandma Gifts. I skimmed Pinterest for a couple of ideas - there are lots of cute ones out there involving handprints and footprints. But like I said back around Valentine's Day, the thought of letting JJ get his whole hand covered in paint makes me twitch. He's a very active little guy and I can imagine handprints all over my house. I did have some success with thumbprints, so when I saw this:

Source: Disney Dreamer Designs

I knew I could come up with something. I did some googling and found this awesome page, Kids 4 Crafts that had a lot of examples of cute little bugs made from fingerprints. 

I didn't get any pictures of the first steps, but basically I just gave the pots and saucers a light coat of spray paint primer. Once dry, I used a sponge paint brush and some acrylic paints to put some green "grass" on the bottom and saucers, and a blue "sky" on the top half. It took about 3 coats and still wasn't perfect, but I knew I was covering it anyway so that didn't really bother me. Once dry, I busted out the stamp pads, distracted JJ in this highchair with a crayon and some paper, and took over the use of his left thumb.

Ignore JJ's can of crunchies in the pic - it took a little bribing at first but then he loved  it.  If you look closely at some of the pics you can even see where he drew with his crayons on the pots too.

JJ's little thumbprint heart.

I let them dry overnight because some of them were pretty thick. The red didn't really show up too dark, but the yellow and brown came out great. I used a black sharpie to draw the bug features - using the pins as a reference and coming up with some of my own ideas.

That little guy in the top right is my favorite. He looks like he's ready to dance.

And I used a paint pen to write "Happy Mother's Day 2013" across the top and "Love JJ" around his thumbprint heart on the saucer. Knowing they would probably be put outside, I gave them three light coats of a matte spray sealer. Once dry, I finally filled them with some (apparently oversized) flowers on Saturday. I love a good poem (stay tuned for more poems with the other Mother's Day gifts) - so I came up with a short one, and printed it on some clip art of snail and popped them in using a bamboo skewer. I think they came out adorable!

I realize the plants are a little stuffed. Despite my years working at a flowershop, I have a black thumb when it comes to plants!

Overall it seems like a lot of steps, but to be honest I started them Tuesday night, and had them done by Saturday morning. The total working time is pretty short, you just have to allow time for drying (primer, paint, thumbprints, and sealer).

Hopefully JJ's Grandmas are better gardeners than I and can keep these flowers alive through the season. They were both happy to get a personalized gift from the little man. And it sort of helps set up future gifts - providing new flowers for the pot every year! Anyone else out there craft something up for Mother's Day?