Grey House Harbor
  • Home
  • about
  • contact

Jun 3 2016

diy : handprint keychain

Posted by hayley
Tweet

I’m such a sucker for little kid handprints—unless they’re on my windows. But, let’s face it, those Plaster-of-Paris prints become dusty fossils in a drawer somewhere and I have yet to actually frame any of the paper ones that come home from preschool. Thanks to shrink plastic, now we can carry those sweet imprints on the daily with these charming DIY handprint keychains!

DIY Handprint Keychain - great gift idea! | greyhouseharbor.com

Materials: Shrinky Dinks plastic (preferably the “crystal clear” kind – can be found at Michaels), GLOSS acrylic craft paint, paintbrush, Sharpie, detail scissors, hole punch, 10mm jump rings (found in jewelry section of craft store), split ring keyring, gloss mod podge, parchment paper (or non-stick silicone baking mat), oven.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

A couple things… I only tried this on the CLEAR Shrinky Dinks plastic. I’m assuming it would work just as well on their frosted or white versions, but can’t say for sure. Also, the acrylic craft paint MUST be gloss finish—matte will not stick to the plastic. After experimenting with a few brands, I found that the Apple Barrel brand from Walmart stuck better than anything I found at Michaels.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

1. Paint your child’s entire hand. Coat it well enough to be all wet, but not so drippy that you loose the details of the print.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

2. Gently guide their hand onto the Shrinky Dinks plastic. Firmly press down all their fingers and palm to get a good imprint. Press the plastic against the table with your free hand while you carefully peel your child’s hand off.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

3. If you mess up, don’t worry! I did too. It took me a couple tries to get the paint thickness just right. Good news is that you haven’t wasted your plastic, just remove the mess-ups with rubbing alcohol and a paper towel.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

4. After you have good handprints, wait for the paint to dry completely. Then, flip the plastic over and add your kiddo’s name, age or year to the other side with a Sharpie. A child that is old enough can even write their own name.

* For frosted plastic, do the handprint on the rough side and the name on the shiny side.*

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

5. After the Sharpie dries, carefully cut out the handprint with small sharp scissors (I love these precision scissors from Cutter Bee).

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

You can cut down in between the fingers, but don’t make them too skinny.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

6. Punch a hole before you bake them! One standard size hole punch will shrink to the perfect size for your jump rings.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

7. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Place your handprint paint side up (sharpie side down). I suggest shrinking just one or two handprints at a time— that way you can keep a close eye on them in the oven.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

8. Pre-heat your oven to 325°F (a conventional or toaster oven is fine—do not use a pop-up toaster or microwave). Once heated, place your cookie sheet and handprints inside. DO NOT FREAK OUT when they start to curl and flip and do all manner of crazy things. This is normal.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

Typically they need to cook for 2-3 minutes, depending on the oven. You’ll know it’s done when the handprint stops moving and has gone mostly, if not completely, flat again. In the event that part of your handprint gets stuck to another part, you can gently pry it apart while it’s still hot with chopsticks or two butter knives.

You can see in the photo below that even though it was done cooking, the handprint wasn’t entirely flat.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

If that happens, quickly press the shrinky dink with a spatula immediately after removing it from the oven to flatten it.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

9. Once the handprint has cooled, it is 9x thicker and very durable. Coating the painted parts with glossy mod podge will help protect the print from scratching off. Try to apply the mod podge only atop the paint and not the clear areas. Let dry.

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

10. Use small pliers to loop a jump ring through the punched hole and onto your keyring!

DIY Handprint Keychain | greyhouseharbor.com

Now, of course these are shrunken handprints and they’ll turn out about 1/3 the actual size. But I don’t know a single mom, dad, or grandparent who wouldn’t be tickled to carry around a daily reminder of the little ones they love.

DIY Handprint Keychain - great gift idea! | greyhouseharbor.com

Editorial Note: After photographing this entire tutorial, I discovered that the handprints hang best from the keyring if they’re punched between the ring and middle fingers—like this…

DIY Handprint Keychain - great gift idea! | greyhouseharbor.com

 

Save

Tags: crafts with kids, diy, father's day, gift ideas, grandparent's day, mother's day, tutorials
CONTINUE READING >
110 comments
Oct 29 2015

spider hat craft

Posted by hayley
Tweet

This year I am moonlighting as Songbird’s 1st grade class “room parent.” Which basically translates into Holiday-Class-Party-Planner-Extraordinaire. Any excuse to get crafty is a good one in my book.

So today I worked on a sample of the spider hat craft that the kids will be constructing during their Halloween party tomorrow. It was so easy and cute I had to share!

Start by tracing a circle approximately 6.5″ wide onto black paper. Cut out.

spider hat craft for kids greyhouseharbor.com

Cut 8 legs about 5″ long by 1″ wide.

spider hat craft for kids greyhouseharbor.com

Have your child glue 4 legs to each side of the circle.

spider hat craft for kids greyhouseharbor.com

Then flip the spider over for them the decorate the face to suit their fancy. Colorful cut paper is best, since markers or crayons wont’ show up well on the black paper. Google eyes aren’t required, but they’re fun!

spider hat craft for kids greyhouseharbor.com

Fold a paper plate in half. Cut just below the ribbed edge about 4/5 of the way around, stopping about where my thumb is.

spider hat craft for kids greyhouseharbor.com

Cut away about a 1/4″ more from the inside of the plate until it looks like this.

spider hat craft for kids greyhouseharbor.com

When you open the plate you should have a circular center similar to this.

spider hat craft for kids greyhouseharbor.com

Glue the completed spider to the center of the plate-hat.

spider hat craft for kids greyhouseharbor.com

Rock on, spider heads!

spider hat craft for kids  greyhouseharbor.com

Tags: crafts with kids, halloween, kid stuff
CONTINUE READING >
1 comment
Mar 28 2015

make it : paper roll easter bunny

Posted by hayley
Tweet

Have you seen the commercials for the tubeless toilet paper? Well, I can guarantee those new-fangled things won’t be making an appearance in mi casa anytime soon because 1) I do not want to clean up business with whatever crazy chemicals are keeping the middle of those things rigid and 2) TP tubes are hoarded and re-used with love in this home.

toliet paper roll Easter bunny  greyhouseharbor.com

Anyone doing fun Easter crafts this week? Or just still being held hostage by the weather like us? Grab those paper rolls outta the trash recycling and let’s make some bunnies! Sketch an outline on the tube like this.

toliet paper roll Easter bunny  greyhouseharbor.com

Cut out with sharp scissors and bend the rear feet out.

toliet paper roll Easter bunny  greyhouseharbor.com

Getchyer paint on.

toliet paper roll Easter bunny  greyhouseharbor.com

We had friends over for a lunch playdate this weekend and all the kids got to design their own toilet paper roll bunny.

toliet paper roll Easter bunny  greyhouseharbor.com

toliet paper roll Easter bunny  greyhouseharbor.com

Putting your fingers inside the tube makes it easier to paint the whole thing.

toliet paper roll Easter bunny  greyhouseharbor.com

toliet paper roll Easter bunny greyhouseharbor.com

What about you? Will you join the tubeless revolution or would the disappearance of the little cardboard roll be a loss too great to bear?

toliet paper roll Easter bunny greyhouseharbor.com

Tags: crafts with kids, diy, Easter, kid stuff
CONTINUE READING >
0 comments
Mar 13 2015

precision engineering (aka : leprechaun traps)

Posted by hayley
Tweet

Last year Songbird built this golden leprechaun palace. And this year she absolutely remembered that the wee lil’ green guy escaped because he was able to cut through the trap door entrance. So we have literally spent a week discussing every facet of how to improve this year’s design.

Leprechaun Traps for Kids  greyhouseharbor.com

Each suggestion I made (mostly because it’d be easy) was immediately rejected on the likelihood of escape. Instead she dreamed up a contraption with multiple layers, sneaky deception, and several design features.

Leprechaun Traps for Kids  greyhouseharbor.com

 Bug, on the other hand, was happy to go along with a simpler mom-directed design. He’s basically on-board with anything that involves going to town with a paintbrush.

Leprechaun Traps for Kids greyhouseharbor.com

Leprechaun Traps for Kids greyhouseharbor.com

Songbird’s version includes attractive signage,

Leprechaun Traps for Kids  greyhouseharbor.com

clever activities,

Leprechaun Traps for Kids greyhouseharbor.com

and even a bed for the poor prisoner to rest until he can meet her demands for gold.

Leprechaun Traps for Kids greyhouseharbor.com

I would explain to you just exactly how these ingenious inventions work…

Leprechaun Traps for Kids  greyhouseharbor.com

… but I’ll leave that to the master (and somewhat long winded) engineers.

Tags: crafts with kids, holidays, Leprechaun traps, our life, St. Patrick's Day
CONTINUE READING >
19 comments


I'm Hayley. Wife and mother by day, DIY enthusiast by night. Fueled by sweet tea and jelly beans, I own power tools and know how to use them. Consider yourself warned.

featured on button

New posts delivered fresh to your inbox!

Follow on Bloglovin

Recent Posts

  • big ‘ole magnet board / job chart
  • a collection of caps a collection of caps
  • a new chapter a new chapter
  • treasure rocks treasure rocks
  • missing grams missing grams

 

S P O N S O R S - & - F R I E N D S

1 2 NEXT

Categories

Archives

Follow

Follow on Bloglovin

Recent Posts

  • big ‘ole magnet board / job chart
  • a collection of caps a collection of caps
  • a new chapter a new chapter

disclaimer & copyright

All opinions within are exclusively and honestly mine. I do not commit to posting positive reviews of any promotional items I may receive. However, if the product or service suits the interests of my readers I may feature it and denote such compensation.
All content © greyhouseharbor.com 2015.