Lucky Shamrock Thumprint Craft

Miss O used to have a big aversion to anything messy. Thankfully she overcame that and will now gleefully stick her hands in any sort of paint or ink. I’m a big fan of washable ink pads for crafts. They come in a rainbow of colours, they won’t spill everywhere and the ink comes right off kids’ hands with simply a baby wipe. A four-leaf clover seemed like the perfect thing to stamp with some thumbs. So that’s exactly what we did!

 

What You’ll Need to Make a Lucky Shamrock

• washable green ink pad
• a piece of white paper
• clothespins
• green paint
• paintbrush
• glue/tape/adhesive of choice
• piece of cardboard

 

All set up and ready to go! To make it a little easier for kids to paint the clothespins, I suggest attaching them to a small piece of cardboard to keep them steady. I also prefer to use foam paintbrushes with toddlers as I find they can control them much easier than a brush. I made one completed shamrock ahead of time so she knew what she was making. It’s much easier for a toddler to see what the craft is than to hear you tell them what it is.

 

Can you tell she has a new love for painting? She has fantastic fine motor skills for a kid who’s not yet 3. She’s much like mommy in that she’s quite the perfectionist with her crafts! 

Unfortunately I couldn’t get any photos of Miss O doing the actual thumbprints. She needed my help with that part and it was just her and I so I couldn’t really take pictures! If she had her way, she would just cover the page in thumbprints. In hindsight, I could have let her go to town with thumbprints and cut out each individual one and fashioned a clover from there. As I was expecting Little J to wake up from his nap any minute, we made short work of the crafts and I simply helped her place her thumb for each side of the clover.

Once the clovers were done, I cut them out of the paper. Miss O loves stickers so I like to use double-sided foam stickers to attach a lot of crafts. She loves to pull the sticker from the paper. She then attached one to the back of each shamrock. The little paper protecting the other sticky side is a bit difficult to remove so I did that for her and then she stuck each shamrock to the top of a clothespin (attach to the end that you pinch, not the closed end). 

 

I had a little rainbow bucket that I tucked some green tissue in to make it look like grass. We added a few chocolate gold doubloons and then clipped our shamrocks to the side. These little clips can be attached to almost anything! Miss O was proud to show her daddy her pot of gold when he got home from work. These shamrock thumbprints were an incredibly simple craft that took very little time to make. 

Looking for more great ideas on crafts, activities and food to celebrate St. Patricks Day: check these out.

Looking for a yummy dessert? Try Jiggly Jello Shamrocks.