MakingMondays: Paw Print Paper

We had so much fun with our crafting this week! And it felt doubly good after last week's little disaster! One morning I saw some of Yashar's animal figurines all lined up on the table (my dear Senol had arranged them late at night after we had all gone to bed so that Yashar could find them like that in the morning) and for some reason it made me think of their footprints!

And since Yashar loves these animals (I think I have mentioned before how he feeds them, brushes their teeth and puts them to sleep!) I thought it would be fun to make some wrapping paper with their footprints all over it that we could wrap some presents for his cousins in.

As soon as Yashar started banging the potato prints down excitedly and saying loudly 'tiger! tiger!' I knew it had been a success!
Here's how we did it:

1. While Yashar was busy with other activities my 12 year old niece and I got busy cutting the potatoes to make the stamps. We drew the shape we wanted to print on a halved potato first and then used a knife to cut around the shapes (but if you had other carving tools they would be very useful here!) And don't forget that the image will be reversed.

2. I set out some red paper on a table and put a small amount of paint in a container with a flat bottom for dipping the potato stamp in. I put out white paint first and then half way through I exchanged it for some blue paint. I have started putting paints out separately like this because Yashar tends to get very excited and want to grab all the paints at once so giving him one paint at a time to concentrate is more manageable and fun for everyone! (lesson learned from last week!)

3. Then I brought Yashar to the table and explained, with the help of his little tiger what we were making. We did the first few prints together and then there was no stopping him! He loved it!