Puffy Paint Hand Print Turkey

**UPDATE**
I've moved to ladybugsandlattes.com
You can find this post and more here
***


Seriously, who needs to shell out the dough for holiday decorations when you have a child? Art projects keep them entertained (and out of trouble) and then you can turn around and display it, passing it off as home decor. Of course, with the little ones, if you want it to resemble specific holiday items, you're going to need to "finish" the projects sometimes. Yesterday, this was our activity...

The hand print turkey: a Thanksgiving staple.

We've all made the typical hand print turkeys where you paint your palm brown and your fingers different colors and it looks like a turkey with feathers. They're adorable and all, but I wanted to do something a little different with my little girl for two reasons.
1) She never (ever) keeps her hand still enough for me to even think I could get away with painting her fingers different colors and then having the luxury of enough time to press her hand on a paper to make anything that resembles a hand print.
2) I needed something a bit bigger to replace the Halloween decorations we made last month.

Instead, I decided to let her paint with "puffy paint" and then I planned to trace her hand and cut it out in different colors to make larger "feathers".

How do you make puffy paint? Simple. Mix equal parts of shaving cream and glue.

It will look very fluffy. Then add a small amount of paint (too much paint makes it too heavy and you won't get the puffy look when it dries).

Then mix it together and start painting. When it dries, it is puffy on the paper. (It works best if you just leave it white, so be very stingy when adding paint.)

I let Cady paint the whole paper, knowing that I would cut it to resemble a turkey body when it dried.

This is what it looked like dried. I probably should've used less paint because it didn't turn out as puffy as it normally does, but the textured effect is still there.

Then I cut it out to resemble the turkey's body (which more or less resembles a Mr. Potato Head).

Meanwhile, I was able to wrangle Cady long enough to let me trace one really sloppy hand print. I cut it out (much nicer than it originally looked), then used that hand print to trace more hands in different colors. I made some of them longer so that the "feathers" would be staggered behind the turkey.

I taped the "feathers" behind the turkey body and used one of the red hands to resemble the gobbler. Then I used my scraps to cut out a beak and eyes.

I think it turned out to be super adorable and it's currently displayed (proudly) over the fireplace mantel...replacing last month's painted ghost art.