Fingerprint Thank You Notes

I believe in thank you notes, the old-fashioned hand-written kind.  I am not a fan of receiving thank you's via text, Facebook or mass-printed, unsigned cards. I always made my kids write thank you notes. Some days it was a challenge but we got them done and they learned the importance of doing so. I believe teaching a young child to write thank you notes is just as important as teaching them to wash their hands.

I recently discovered these drawing books. In these books the author demonstrates how to combine fingerprints and thumbprints, ink pads or water colors, with some simple drawing and outlining.

The results are adorable images of birds, plants, objects, etc. I do a lot of handprint art projects with my granddaughters but they make, by necessity, larger pieces of artwork. These little fingerprint drawings make the perfect artwork for thank you cards.

Our youngest granddaughter recently had her fourth birthday. It is the custom for me to pick her up on Friday afternoon for an overnight visit at Nana & Papa's. I usually try to incorporate a craft or baking session in these visits.  This Friday we made fingerprint thank you cards. I used my Stampin' Up! stamp pads and some stamps for this purpose.  In the future I think I will get a more child-friendly ink.  It was hard to get the ink off her little fingers and my worktable!

We got 10 of these done this day before her attention span started wandering. We have smudges and boo-boos, but that's quite all right! Due to her age, I had to write out the notes but I did make her sit by me as I did so and we talked about the gifts she received and who gave them to her. By making this a fun art time I'm hoping this is the start of a lifetime of writing out thank you notes!