Mother's Day Fingerprint Vase Craft Gifts

Home-made crafts are perfect gifts for Mother's Day because the end result is a personal, touching piece your mother can keep and display for years. Fingerprints vases are easy to make, cheap on your budget, and make great Mother's Day activities for churches, schools, child care programs or rainy afternoons at home.

Start with a clear glass vase or glass. You can use glass jars, baby food jars, or old glasses at your home, or visit your local Goodwill thrift store to purchase them. Unique glass vases work best, but almost any simple vase can be purchased for less than $1 at a thrift store. Just remember clear glass works best for this Mother's Day craft.

Cover your craft area with towels, newspaper or disposable tablecloths to protect the table and floors. Younger children will need more supervision, and possibly craft aprons, during this activity. Place paper plates around the table with dollaps of washable craft paint. Using permanent paint will make the Mother's Day gift last longer, but may not be wise with extremely young children. You can use washable paint and "fix" the vase against smudging.

Give each child a clear glass vase or jar and a piece of construction paper. Start by showing the children how to dip their fingers, one at a time, into a color of paint and then press it onto the paper. Use the fingerprints to make flower designs. Make a small circle with the tip of your pinkie finger in yellow paint. Then use pink or red paint on your pointer finger to press oval petals around the yellow center for a beautiful fingerprint flower. Use another finger in green paint to make leaves for the flower stem. You can add grass and stems with a thin paintbrush.

Have the children play on their craft paper until they have the hang of making fingerprint flowers, butterflies or whatever fun designs they can invent. When they have decided which designs to put on their Mother's Day gift, help them begin pressing their fingerprints onto the side of the glass vases. Fill in details with a thin paint brush.

Older children may be able to finish their Mother's Day vases in one sitting, but younger children are more likely to smudge the wet designs. Help younger children decorate one side of their glass jar and allow it to dry before decorating the other side.

Encourage the children to be as creative as possible in designing their home-made Mother's Day gifts. Fingerprint flowers and leaves are easy. Also show children how to use yellow paint on their thumbprint to make a bee. Use a pinkie tip to make wings and a head. Use a thin paint brush to add black stripes over the oval print for the bee's yellowjacket colors and an antenna on the head. Butterflies can be made with four small fingerprints pressed together in matching upside-down V's with a body painted in the middle.

Allow the completed Mother's Day vases to dry overnight. If you used permanent paint, the vases are washable as they are. If you used washable paint with younger children, paint a layer of clear shellac or fingernail polish over the painted designs to protect them from water splashing. Machine washing the Mother's Day gifts is not recommended but light hand washing should not remove the designs.

Pick a few spring flowers and fill the Mother's Day vases before presenting them as your gift. Make a one large vase using all the children's fingerprints for a large family. Or make a small baby jar vase to add to a tray for Mother's Day breakfast in bed. Small families might want to make a set of two or three vases, one for each child, to be displayed together in a window sill or office desk.