Festive Fun! Ideas for how to reuse those inkpads

This year is my family’s first foray into festive fingerprints and it was such a gorgeous thing to do this festive season. I have to say while I adore the whole Christmas card tradition, writing them isn’t one of my favourite things to do. Making these cards as a family made it such a fun and enjoyable experience for all of us - I’m keeping one back and am going to write a few 2020 Christmas memories in them to look back on in years to come. I think it’s been a bit of a year for all of us, so it’ll be extra nice to look back on some of the good bits.

One of the things I love about these cards is that you have everything set up for you to make your own beautiful cards, the pre-printed cream card stock, envelopes and the cute little colourful inkpads. I particularly love the silver ink, the way it captures all the delicate ridges and swirls of your little ones fingerprints is so perfect. Using inkpads are one of my favourite things to use when making with my kids as they have such an instant effect with little effort.

At Christmas I always make paper snowflakes with my children, they’re so easy to do and the little look of joy on their faces when they unfurl their snowflakes is just the cutest! So I thought these would be the perfect thing to make and decorate with our leftover inkpads from our festive fingerprints cards.

To make them, you will need some paper - any you have to hand, I actually used the packaging that my cards were wrapped in along with some coloured paper I had in my craft stash, scissors, and some round objects to draw around - I used a small dish and some rolls of tape.

The best thing with these is that even the youngest pre-schoolers can make them with only a little help and the older kids (and adults!) can just cut more intricate shapes. It’s a beautifully mindful activity (not to mention a great way to practice fine motor skills for tiny hands) and one where you can put on some Christmas music and really get into the festive spirit!

As you can see from the video, to make them all you need is to:
1. Draw around and cut out some circles from different papers
2. Fold the circle in half, and then half again (you can fold again depending on the size of your circle) 3. Cut shapes from all the edges to create the snowflakes
4. Unfold the snowflakes and see your amazing patterns!

And now is the time to decorate with your wonderful fingerprints! We simply printed and pressed our fingers onto wherever we fancied on the snowflakes, but you could do patterns, alternate with colours, or do a particular colour for each family member to create your own family flurry!

Once you’ve cut your snowflakes you can either loop through some twine to make tree decorations, string them up to make garlands or add them to presents for a fun wrap finish.

Georgia Coote x