"Hands Down Best Dad" project

This weekend is my husband's birthday and on top of the coveted XBOX 360 game I got him, I also wanted to give him a more meaningful gift from the boys . After some brainstorming and browsing through the stuff I had laying around I came up with this project I have titled the "Hands Down Best Dad" project. Simple, cheap (or free in my case since I had all the supplies!) and thoughtful...my 3 favorite qualities in a gift.

 Here's how I did it:

Supplies:
*Picture frame (any size will work...pick something that will fit your project)
*Ribbon
*Paint
*Lettering - I used my Cricut for this. You could just as easily use stickers, vinyl letters, stenciled letters, etc.
*Hot glue and a glue stick
*Paper - Something to put it all on. I recently ordered a huge roll of pattern paper for making sewing patterns. It is kind of see through so I also used some cute wrapping paper behind it that slightly show through. You could use card stock, wrapping paper, etc. I also used construction paper for the lettering.

Get Started:
1. Cut whatever paper you are using to fit the frame. This is the wrapping paper I used behind the pattern paper:

2. Paint your kids hands and press down onto paper (Can I tell you how hard it was doing the 8 month old's?):

3. I did a strip of ribbon above and below the hand prints to frame them. Cut two even strips and use hot glue to adhere to the paper (I only glued the ends, I would recommend a dot in the middle of each strip also to keep it in place):

4. Now to do the names by the hand prints. Be creative here! I wanted to match the polka dot theme I already had going to I used red, green and blue construction paper along with my Cricut and cartridge punch set to create the boys' names:

Used my Cricut to create perfect circles

Punched the boys names into the green and red circles using my cartridge punch set

Glued the red and green circles onto the blue ones for this multi-color look

Their names applied to the paper with a glue stick

5. Using my Cricut, I cut out the phrase Hands Down Best Dad and applied to my project:

6. Finally, I put it into my frame (polka dot wrapping paper first, hand print paper on top):

I am really pleased with all of the color in this project. So much more fun than a basic hand print. We couldn't wait to share this with daddy so we opened presents earlier this week and he loved it!!