Turkey Handprint Trivets

Today I decided to try an idea that was brewing in my head. I cleaned my craft room yesterday because there has been some craftiness taking place in that space and it was a mess. When I was cleaning I discovered two white ceramic tiles that I had bought a few months back. I originally had a hand-print Christmas tree trivet in mind. However, when I tried it with acrylic paint on the ceramic tile (from Home Depot) the paint didn't adhere well. So I washed the tile clean and it ended up piled under a bunch of other stuff until yesterday. I needed an idea for my MOPS group blog post, so I decided to do hand-print turkeys using scrapbook paper and Mod Podge. I think they turned out really, really cute.



Below you can see most of the supplies used. I traced the boys' hands on the wrong side of some scrapbook paper and cut them out. Instead of doing each "feather" in a different paper, I decided to use a brown plaid paper I really liked for the whole tail. I used my star punch to make feet and a beak (I cut off a star point for the beak) and my heart punch (cut in half) for the wattle. I used a regular size hole punch to punch out an eye. The photo shows everything laid out on the tile before I Mod-Podged it. That's why it looks kind of crooked.







The first step was to spread a thin layer of Mod Podge all over the clean, dry tile with a foam brush. Then I laid out the paper pieces and brushed another layer of Mod Podge over the top. After that coat was dry I added stickers to spell each boy's name and the year. Then I put another 2 coats of Mod Podge over the top again to really adhere the stickers. The photo below shows one tile which is mostly dry and the other one still wet. If you try this and have never used Mod Podge, don't worry, it dries clear.

I think these turned out SOOOOO cute. I am so happy with them. I will add little felt circles (like the kind you put under furniture) to the back corners. I think I'll also pick up some little plate easels at Hobby Lobby and display these on a shelf in an upright position. They will be fun to pull out each year. I was barely able to fit my 9 year olds' hand on one, so I'm glad I did it this year. He might be too big next year to do this!

The photo below shows last year's Thanksgiving hand-print craft. I used fabric paint to do "hand turkeys" of each boy and freezer paper stencilled the words in the middle. The pillow is made out of burlap. CLICK HERE for a link to the post describing this project.

"got thanks?" t-shirt

The other crafty thing I've been wanting to do is make a freezer paper stencilled t-shirt for myself for Thanksgiving. I think this is totally my idea because I have not seen it elsewhere. Using a take-off of the "got milk?" campaign from the Dairy Council I thought it would be cool to paint a t-shirt to wear on or near Thanksgiving that said, "got thanks?" Last night I finally got my act together to make one. I just picked up an orange t-shirt from Target yesterday. Below you can see how it looks. I pretty much like it. I was originally going to use black paint but decided that would look too much like Halloween and used white instead. It looks pretty good in the photo but in person I think I needed one more layer of white paint. I had planned to paint "give thanks" on the back with my two sons' handprints right next to it but I'm not sure that will get done in time for this year's Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll add it later. I'm not sure. Let me know what you think. Is this a weird idea? Will people get it?

"give thanks" pillow

OK.........I've been hinting around about a few projects in the works and I finally buckled down last night and stayed up late to finish one of them so I could post it. Since I've started the new running program I haven't been staying up very late but today was a rest day so I made an exception last night. My inspiration for this project was some burlap monogram lampshades I saw over on Rhoda's blog a while back. I thought it was a great idea and I love doing freezer paper stencilling. Immediately I could envision how cute it would be to do a "give thanks" pillow on burlap with my boys' handprints decorated like turkeys and that is what I decided to try to do.

In case you are unfamiliar with freezer paper stencilling I decided to make this a detailed step-by-step post. If you aren't interested or already know how scroll down to see the finished pillow.

First I found a font I liked and printed out the words "give thanks" in a Word document using landscape orientation. The font I used is called Kristen ITC. I just kept enlarging the font until it pretty much filled up the entire 8 1/2 by 11 inch space. My font size was probably about 200 although I can't remember exactly. I also used bold typeface. Once I had it how I wanted it (I also had to adjust the margins to make them as narrow as possible) I printed it out. I then placed the copy underneath a piece of freezer paper (shiny side down) and traced it onto the printer paper with a pen. See photo below.

The next step was the most tedious and probably took me about 30 minutes. I did it while watching TV. Using nail scissors I carefully cut out the insides of all the letters from the freezer paper. Make sure when you do this to cut out the middles of your letters and don't discard them as you will need to iron them on during the next step.




Once all the letters were cut out I ironed the freezer paper (shiny side down) onto a big piece of burlap. Use a dry iron for this or the freezer paper will get wrinkly. Be sure to carefully iron on the center of your letters with open middles. Check to be sure all edges are adhered securely to the fabric.




Next, using a paintbrush (sponge ones are great for this) tap fabric paint inside all the letters until they are covered as shown below. You may need to add another coat. I usually do this one right after another instead of waiting for the paint to dry between coats. I'm impatient like that.




You will need to let the paint dry for several hours (I usually do this after the boys' bedtime and let it dry overnight). Once it's dry, carefully peel off the freezer paper to reveal your image. This is my favorite part of freezer paper stencilling. It always looks so good when you peel off the paper. I was a little leery of how this would turn out on burlap as I've only ever freezer paper stencilled on knit jersey fabric. It worked like a dream!!

Since I wanted to add the hand turkeys I painted the boys' hands and fingers with the fabric paint and stamped them on either side of the words. This didn't work so well and I had to go back with a paintbrush and fill in the paint quite a bit. I then used more fabric paint to add a bead, wattle, eye and legs to the turkeys. I am bummed about how the black paint for the eyes spread out. I think I was using old paint and it was pretty runny. :0(

This one is my little boy's hand.

And my big boy's hand.

I finished the painting about a week ago and last night I finally headed down to the craft room to sew the pillow. I just cut an even rectangle around the painted part and then used that as a template to cut a second piece of burlap for the back. I sewed the two sides together (paint side out) leaving a very wide margin all around so I could trim it afterwards. I left a hole a few inches wide and stuffed the pillow full of polyester fiberfill. Then I sewed up the hole. It was pretty easy to do this even though the pillow was full of stuffing. The final step was to trim all the edges evenly (eyeballed it) and then fray the edges to give it a fringed trim. The stitching line stops the fraying so I just pulled out strands until I was really close to the stitching. I LOVE the fringed trim. It's just about my favorite part aside from the hand turkeys. Oh.......and I also love how the saying turned out. OK............I just love the whole thing. It's fun when an idea goes from your head to reality and looks as good as or better than you imagined it. This will be a fun keepsake to pull out and display each November.

Here's a close-up of the fringed corner.

If you like this idea but are intimidated by the sewing part think of how cute this would be just done up on burlap, fringed, and hung on a dowel instead of being made into a pillow. You could also frame it. Many possibilities. When I bought the tan burlap at Hobby Lobby I also bought about a yard of red burlap. (Burlap is really inexpensive by the way.) I thought it would be very cute to make some little red pillows with "ho ho ho" stencilled on them for Christmas. So........that's on the to-do list too. A burlap pillow (or burlap in a frame) with a monogram would make a great, easy and inexpensive Christmas gift. Your children could help out with the painting and stuffing part. I have a lot of burlap left and am already thinking of more project ideas. Fun, fun, fun!!