Easy DIY Mistletoes Christmas Platter

Okay, so if you have the squirmiest, wiggliest baby in the world like I do, the "easy" part of this may be subjective. Annabelle is in perpetual motion, so it's a difficult task trying to get her to be still... even if we try holding her down. But if your baby is normal... then this project will go much quicker!

Since we live far away from family members, I wanted to make something special for them for Annabelle's first Christmas. I saw a lot of ideas floating around Pinterest-land, and I settled on the Mistletoes. I didn't want this on canvas, though, because I KNEW it would take us forever to actually get footprints. And we made THREE of these plates - one to keep, one for her Grammy, and one for her Great Meme! Since we could just wipe bad footprints off of plates and try again, I opted for these plain white ones from Dollar Tree. Yep, they were $1 each! 

All I did was use a foam brush to paint the bottoms of Annabelle's feet. We did one at a time. We got her right footprint on all three plates before moving on. We had to reapply paint after each plate. (And yes, we had to wipe the smeared footprint/paint off several times before we got a good one - baby wipes came in handy here). 

Once those dried, I used the paint pens to draw the bows over the footprints, and then I added the little dot embellishments. After that dried, I then drew on the string of lights with black on each plate. I let that dry for a couple hours, and then I did one color of light bulbs on all three plates... let it dry... did a second color... let it dry... did the third and final color... let it dry... and THE I wrote her name. 

After all of it is painted, place the plate into the oven, turn it on to 350º, and bake it for 30 minutes to set the colors in. Do not preheat the oven first - you want your plates to gradually warm up so they don't crack! 

Overall, I spent $3 for this project since I already had the paint and paint pens at home from other projects. If you don't, though, each color is only about $1 for regular paint and close to $2 for the paint pens! Not too bad, and you can use them again and again for other grandparent gifts throughout the year. 

Do you enjoy handprint / footprint crafts with your kids?