St. Patrick's Day Craft - St. Patrick's Day Hand-cuts Wreath

Make a lovely St. Patrick's Day decoration using a child's cut out hand shapes. This is a neat project to do every year and compare how the child's hands change over time. Make it a St. Patrick's Day tradition!

Supplies:
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Construction paper in holiday colors
A pen or pencil
Scissors
Glue or glue stick
Optional: photograph of the whose hand you're tracing

Step 1 ~
Using the pen or pencil, trace around your child's hand while holding it flat on the construction paper. The fingers should be spread while you're doing this. If you're doing this with an infant, I suggest doing the tracing while the child is asleep. Very small children tend to clench their hands closed most of the time, and a sleeping (or sleepy) child will be easier to get to open their hand and lay it flat while you are tracing.

Step 2 ~
Carefully cut out the hand shape you just traced. Use it as a template to cut out more. I used 10 in the example pictured with this article. You may need more or less, depending on how big you want your wreath to be, and how big the child's hands are. You can cut out all the same color of hands, or you could choose two or three colors and alternate as you go around the wreath. Multiple shades of green, or green with black and/or gold accents, look very nice for this project.

Step 3 ~
Lay your hand cut-outs in a circle, overlapping each other a bit, with the fingers or each hand cut-out pointing towards the outside of the circle.

Step 4 ~
Take some time to get your hand cut-outs all arranged evenly and balanced-looking in a ring. Then carefully lift one edge of each hand cut-out and apply some glue and then press it back down in place. Go carefully all the way around the ring, gluing down one hand cut-out at a time until they are all secure.

Step 5 ~
If you want to decorate the center, you can add a shamrock shaped cut-out, or a picture of the child. Just glue it onto the center area. In the example image shown with this article, I made all the hand cut-outs green, and then added a black shamrock shape to the center.

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