The diary of Dad

We’ve been getting creative again and this week we have been making beautiful butterfly handprints together. This craft is such fun and you can even create lovely keepsakes or ideal gifts with the handprints.

With our Son, Robbie, due to start primary school in September we have been busy practicing crafts and art techniques that will likely benefit him in his early school years. We are trying to get him used to using equipment such as scissors and paints in a fun and creative environment and these butterfly handprints are the perfect preschool craft.

What you will need to make butterfly handprints

• Card (White or coloured)
• Pens or pencils
• Glue
• Paints and glitter
• Lollipop sticks (Optional)
• Your child’s hand!

The items needed for this craft are actually very flexible. There are many different ways to make and decorate the handprint butterflies all dependant on how you like to craft, your child’s skills and what you have in your craft kit. I will explain how we made our butterflies and let you know a few different alternatives too.

How to make handprint butterflies

The first step is to take a piece of card and fold it in half. Now ask your child to place their hand at the edge of the folded side and carefully trace around their hand. Leaving the card folded, let your child cut around the handprint and then unfold the card to create perfectly symmetrical butterfly wings. For this step we used plain white card as we wanted to leave plenty of wings for Robbie to paint and decorate, though it can be made in a more simple way using coloured card.

Now is the fun part. Unleash your child with an array of paints, sparkles and anything else in your crafting arsenal to turn the plain wings into a beautiful masterpiece. This is a great exercise to bring out the creative side of the kids, just be sure to have an easy to clean area ready to take the battering!

With the butterfly wings now expertly decorated, all that is left is to make the body. We chose to create ours using a lollipop stick and some colours though the body can also be made using card cutouts.

To use the lollipop stick, simply glue it to the centre of the wings. If you have googly eyes handy then use these, otherwise just draw on a couple of eyes and your handprint butterfly is complete.

Uses for handprint butterflies

Obviously, the main fun of this craft is to let your child get creative and perhaps a little bit messy but once finished these handprints can also be useful in a few ways.

These prints can make excellent hand made gifts for family and loved ones. They can even be used as a birthday card with plenty of room for a message on the back of the wings.

Another possible use that we liked is to glue the butterfly to a stick and use them as decorative pieces around indoor plants or greenhouses to add a little sparkle.

I hope you found this craft useful and have lots of fun creating butterfly handprints with your little one. If you are still looking for more ideas to entertain your kids around the house then check out some more great craft ideas below.