Hand Prints

I wanted to make the grandparents something special for their Christmas presents, and I found the perfect hand print instructions at Homemade Grits and decided to try it.  So, here is my successful attempt at the same.

So the ingredients include:

4 cups of flour

1cup salt

1 1/2 cups water

Preheat the oven at 300ºF

You will knead the dough for 15-20 minutes

I rolled the dough out and had the kids put their hand prints one by one. After each print I cut the hand prints out.  I didn't have a cookie cutter, so I used the lid to the coffee as a template and then cut the circle with a knife.

The next step is to make a hole in one spot big enough for ribbon to go through. I used an unsharpened pencil to make the hole, twirl it around so it goes all the way through.  It's important to poke little holes throughout the circle, because this will make sure bubbles don't happen.  Just lightly put pokes in the dough, they will go away when baking.  I also put their names and the year on before I put them in with a toothpick. 

Her directions say to spray pam, but I found it left the bottoms a little damper when they finished, so I would suggest tin foil.  Depending how thick you make the dough will determine how long you leave them in the oven. The websites direction say 20 minutes, but I ended up having to leave them in for 2 hours.  I must have made them super thick.  Mine were about 1 centimeter thick.  When they come out they should look browned.  If they aren't hard when you pull them out, don't worry because they will harden when they cool.

I took them outside and spray painted them gold.

After they dried I used my glue gun to stick felt on the backs.  I knew my mom would want to hang them on the wall, and this would help keep the wall from being marked up and keep the hand print from breaking or cracking.

 Here is the final product.  I wrapped these up in tissue paper and placed them in a pretty cookie tin.  These went over very well, I think we even got some tears!