Hand & Foot Turkeys

Do you ever get really awesome ideas that keep you up at night? I do and today’s craft is one that happened with. I love making fun new crafts with my daughter that are different and outside of the box, as well as, something that I can keep as a long time keepsake. I’m drawn to things that show how much she’s grown and hand and feet you just can’t go wrong with. Laying in bed one night I came up with this idea to use her hands and her feet to make a turkey. We had so much fun making them. They are pretty easy to make but I will say that with the dry time it does take a little spreading out. I’ll also tell you that I had some really awesome pictures of our process and up making them and I accidentally deleted all my photos off of my camera… So that was pretty super.

Anyways, today’s toddler craft is Hand and Foot Turkeys which is perfect since Thanksgiving is two weeks away. When we made these we made several so that Ryan could take one to work, we could get them to the grandparents, have one for the house and for her keepsake book. I love making extras because you just never know if something will end up getting lost or if you’ll need extras in the future. Since this craft is relatively easy and sadly, I don’t have photos I’m going to walk you through how we made them.  Please do keep in mind it does take a little dry time. We started in the morning for the painting, cut and glued in the afternoon the body.  The next morning we did the face.

What you will need:
Construction paper – a variety of colors. We personally chose fall type colors, tans, browns, a deep red purple.
Googly eyes
Paint
Scissors
Glue
Plate for Paint
Paint Brushes
A tad bit of time and patience.

How to Make It:
Prepare your paint on a plate. We decided to do yellow and red and then blended into the orange in the center so that it was a gradient look on her hands. Paint your child’s hands with the paint and have them spread out their fingers and press them onto the paper.  Create an even amount of left hands and right hands.  Don’t stress about if they handprint is perfect, as turkey feathers aren’t perfect in real life anyway. 😉

Once you’re done with both hands for both hands, you can add a little green to your paint and make it a brown color, or just start from scratch if that’s easier for you. For this, you can do right and left feet or just one foot. We did a mixture of both. Paint your child’s foot with the brown paint and press on to the construction paper. Set aside to dry.

Once the paint has dried cut out around the hands and the feet. You can get as close to prints as you would like or give it a little space. Depending on the footprint some we choose to cut closer to the prints on some than others  others when cutting them out.

When lining up the “feathers” of the hands you’re going to put the right-hand on the left side and the left hand on the right side. This means the thumb will be at the bottom of the bird. The set up allows for the wingspan of the turkey making a full wing spread. Now turn your brown foot upside down but heel will be at the top. I cut out circles for the back of each turkey so that everything would have a place to connect with the glue. Depending on your side child’s hand size will probably depend on how big you want your circle at the back. Our circles are approximately 2 1/4″ width. This size worked for us because it allowed for all of the parts to come together with the glue, keeping everything together. We also chose to write her name in the year on the back of the circles for a keepsake. Once you’re glue is stuck together and dried your turkey will be ready to be turned over, for a nose and some googly eyes.

We used scrap leftover yellow for the noses and just cut out trying time in a very sizes. We took a piece of red construction paper scraps from another project and cut out their small gobblers to glue them as well. For the googly eyes we have a variety pack of sizes and I let A mix up the eyes for the different turkeys. Some had big eyes, others had small eyes.

Throughout the entire project I encouraged him to help me. Obviously her hands and feet were a big help as I would’ve been able to make the turkeys about those. Since she is only two I control the glue quite a bit, otherwise we have glue everywhere. However, I put the glue on the paper and encourage her to place the paper or other items where they belong. Sometimes things get crooked or move from where, we as adults may not have put them on, but that’s okay it’s the fun of kids crafts. For the Beacon the gobbler I gave her the gobbler first and she stuck it were my line of glue was. Then I gave her the nose and she stuck the beak down too. For the Googly eyes it was the same thing. I would set out to googly eyes of whatever sizes and put the glue on the paper and she placed the eyes. Sometimes it can be hard to step out of the box when creating wanting things to be in a practical area, but just remember that you’re encouraging your child’s creativity and “different” is totally okay!

 What do you think? Are you loving the hand and foot turkeys?  If so, I’d love to see them! Leave the links in the comments or tag me via twitter, or instagram using @joyfullysmitten! I can’t wait to see!