Mother's Day Presents: Dotted Flower Pot & Handprint Frame

We're hosting a Mother's Day Tea for ER's Grammy and Grandma Norma tomorrow so we've been busy crafting up a handmade present for ER to give them. I wanted to make something simple and easy that she could help me with, but still have a finished project that looked like something and not abstract art. It can be hard to come up with something a two and a half year old can do most of the work on! Here's what we came up with, and if your child can hold a paint brush he or she can do it!

Giving Grandmas flowers for Mother's Day is a typical gift and we need a centerpiece so we began by making dotted flower pots. ER's favorite art activity is painting so this one was perfect for her. I liked it because she could go to town and just do her thing, it didn't have to look like something recognizable. We made a set of three: one for my mom and Brad's mom, and one for me, because if I'm doing all this work with her I should get something out of it too☺
First we painted each paint pink, and for some reason it got all over her, on the face, in the hair, everywhere! We let them dry a few days because I didn't have everything I needed for the next step.

I finally picked up some dots from the office store , ours had garage sale prices on them because they were the cheapest, so we could do the cool part of the painting project. All the dots in primary colors came in huge sets and were nine bucks, and since we painted right over ours I thought it was much better to get the cheaper smaller set.

I put on the dot stickers, make sure the edges are down good so you get nice clean dots when you peel them off. Then ER painted each pot purple. She also managed to paint quite a bit of herself in the process, it was right into the bath afterward! If your kiddo is like mine, the coats of paint will be pretty thick, so you'll need to give it plenty of time to dry.

After the purple paint dried, I peeled off all the dot stickers and voila! We had a cute pink dotted purple pot. I tied a sheer ribbon around the top and we planted pansies in each one. I think our set of three will look pretty on our tea table and each of the Grandmas will get to take one home.

This was a pretty inexpensive project, the pots, plants, and spool of ribbon were less than two dollars each. We used two small bottles of paint that I had on hand, they were less than a dollar each because I wait until they go on sale and stock up at the craft stores. I think the dot stickers were the most expensive individual item at about three dollars for the pack.

We also made each Grandma a "card" using a two sided 5x7 clear plastic frame. The one for my mom is below, I used 2 pieces of scrapbook paper cut to 5x7, cardstock mat cut to 4.5x6.5, and a 4x6 photo of each Grandma with ER. On the right side, the white paper is cut to 4.5x6.5 and we made a handprint heart together. Then I stamped the sentiment. Back in CA, my friend Melissa made something similar with her little boy for a Valentine's Day gift and the project idea has been filed back in my head until now. I love how our "cards" that double as another little gift came out.