Christmas card craft

This year I wanted Andrew to help make some Christmas cards for family. What I came up with would take too long to do for all the friends we wanted to send greetings to too. I’ve had to wait til now of course to put this online (and I thought it would be best to do it before the end of the year – I’m just in time), otherwise it would have spoiled the surprise for any of them who read this blog. So here is a step by step guide on how we made footprint angel cards!

1. Andrew got stripped to his nappy (it was nice and warm on the floor as we have underfloor heating), and I laid out some newspaper. We opened a pot of red finger paint which I bought from Hobbycraft. Andrew held a (still sealed!) pot of yellow finger paint, so his hands were kept amused.
2. My glamorous assistant Tom (dressed in old clothes) sat Andrew on his lap in front of the newspaper, and held his (A’s!) legs out in front. I laid some A5 pieces of cream card on the newspaper.
3. In a rather speedy manoeuvre, I got a dollop of paint on my fingers, and smeared it onto the soles of his feet before he had chance to grab them, then on the shout of ‘Lift!’, Tom hoisted Andrew up whilst I directed his feet to stand on a piece of card. Once the red footprints were firmly established, I pulled the card away and Tom sat Andrew down again.
4. When they were dry, I then transformed each set of footprints into an angel by drawing a head, body and halo in pencil to fit with the footprints as wings. A black gel-ink pen then made the pencil lines bolder, before I went round the whole angel shape with glitter glue, plus the halo on top.
5. We still have quite a lot of A4 chocolate brown card left over from the wedding stationary that we made (we got married in 2008!), so I folded several pieces in half to make A5 cards. I then cut round each angel with about a 2mm border of cream card beyond the glitter line, and stuck it onto the centre of a brown card with double sided tape.
6. The finishing touch was a verse from the book of Luke in the Bible, telling of what an angel said to the shepherds who were watching their flocks on a hillside near Bethlehem on the night that Jesus was born. I stuck this to the inside of the card, again using double sided tape.
7. It took 3 sittings to get 14 sets of footprints from the little fella (artists can be temperamental you know). I decided to ring the changes and use green paint on the 3rd go – it looks quite effective with purple glitter I think.

(Andrew had to be dunked straight in the bath afterwards, and he loved the green water!

We even found that a little hand had managed to grab the bathroom door on the way in!)

There we go – handmade Christmas cards using the raw talent of Andrew’s feet! Tom’s words were: ‘they’re random, but in a good way’….what do you think?!