Turkey craft/keepsake

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am a huge sucker for anything made with a child's hand or footprint.  Today I would like to share with you a craft that I made with a little help from my 13 month old son.  With Thanksgiving coming up I decided that I wanted some simple decorations, and this is one thing that I created.  I love that I can save it for years to come (if I choose) to remember my sweet baby's tiny hands.  I know that not everyone who reads this blog celebrates Thanksgiving so try taking the handprint idea and see what else you can come up with.  I have seen tons of different ideas online.  Feel free to be as creative as you want.  Here is a picture of the finished product.

You could add more or less feathers to get the look that you want.  Also I was going to add googly eyes, but all of mine are at school.  I might change that later.  To make this turkey I traced my son's shoe for the body, once going slightly diagonal one way, then overlapped the top and went slightly diagonal the other way.  I ended up with a shape like this.

 

Over a period of a day I got my son to stand still and let me trace his hand a few times.  I would do it once, then he would go off.  A while later I would try to get him to do it again, and so on throughout the day.  I ended up with four handprints on white paper.  I chose the one that looked the best (where he moved the least), and cut it out to use as a stencil like this.

I then traced the good handprint onto several different colors of construction paper and cut them out.  I drew a beak, a waddle, and some feet and cut those out as well.  Then I put it all together for the finished product you see above.  A very simple, yet cute decoration that I will somehow save for years to come.