Mother's Day Handprint Flower Dish Towel

A dish towel with colorful painted handprint flowers and the word, "Mom".

Need a cool gift to give for Mother's Day?

What Mother doesn’t need new dish towels? This Mother’s Day Handprint Flower Dish Towel craft time was a big hit with the grands. They exclaimed over and over how much fun it was and loved discovering new ways of using their hands and thumbprints to make their flower pictures.

A Mother's Day Handprint Flower Dish Towel- great gift idea

They will use the dish towels for their mother’s day gift. Now let’s see if they can keep it a secret!

Colorful dish towels, paint brushes, and a rainbow of paint bottles.

Laughter, visiting, creative flow- oh, my!

This project took almost no preparation and was done in 30 minutes. All I can say is that there was laughter, visiting, and creative flow going on during that time. I’m thinking you will have the same experience. And isn’t that what this is all about?

Woven dish towel...or tea towel

You can use any Dish Towels that are made from a woven cloth. A terry cloth fabric won’t work to paint on with the fuzzy surface. We called them tea towels when I was growing up, wonder why? I love these Dish Towels with the colored stripes on them, but they can be plain as well.

A child's hand painted blue and red and purple, leaving a handprint on a dish towel.

Choose your paint colors

A foam plate makes the best paint pallet. I explained what the project was (flowers and stems design) and then set out a number of Acrylic Craft Paints on the table. The kids chose their towel color and then chose the paints they wanted for their flowers and stems.

They squirted out about a quarter sized amount of the paint on the plate of the flower colors first. I should have had them wear paint shirts, oops. You may want to do that if your grands are wearing clothes that need to be protected. Also, I was working on my craft table and didn’t put down paper to protect the table either- double oops.

A child leaving a green thumbprint on a painted dish towel with handprints.

Paint on your hands, how fun

Anyways…the kids used a larger paint brush to brush the paint on their hands. It needed to be done quickly enough so that the paint didn’t dry and enough paint to make a good print. It would work well to make a sample print on some scrap fabric first so they could get the hang of it.

Imagine your design first

I encouraged the little artists to imagine their design first, where they wanted their flowers and pointed out the need to leave space for the flower stems. It was so interesting to hear their ideas and how each one envisioned their project differently. I love that and want to encourage them to do their own ideas, not just do what the person next to them does. Kids are really willing to do that, we need to learn from them.

A child painting a green stem on a blue handprint to create a flower on fabric..

Handprint flowers, just lovely

The flower handprints worked great (again, there needs to be enough paint on their hands). They just pressed their hands down well and gently pulled them up off the fabric.

There is always a bit of mess, isn't there?

The messiest part was washing off the child’s hand so that they could change colors. Be sure to have an OLD towel in the bathroom for them to dry their hands on as there is bound to be paint that gets smudged on it.

A child painting the word "Mom" on a handprint flower dish towel.

Veriegated flowers

If you notice, the flower handprints sometimes were created with more than one color of paint. The budding artists (pun intended) started painting their hands with more than one color of paint. I thought that was the coolest idea and turned out making pretty variegated flowers.

Stems and leaves

After finishing the flowers the kids painted the flower stems with a smaller paint brush. They used their thumbs to print leaves on the stems.

A dish towel with colorful painted handprint flowers and the words, "Mom I love you".

Budding artists with great ideas

By then the creative juices were flowing and they asked about making a butterfly. Sure!! The butterfly was made with four thumbprint wings and a finger print head and body. SO CUTE!!

They also thought of a handprint sun with their fingers being the sun rays.

Let's do this one again!

It was the general consensus to plan on doing Mother’s Day Handprint Flower Dish Towel project again and gifting the decorated towels to other people. I can’t wait and hope that I get one done for myself then as well.

We left the Dish Towels on the table to dry and I plan to tumble them in the dryer for a bit to set the paint. You can also iron them with an iron set on medium heat (keep the iron moving).

A Surprise Gift for mom...umm...may not be a surprise after this post...oops

Again, this was such an enjoyable project. We all enjoyed it and they are so excited to have a surprise gift for their mother. By the way, my daughter-in-love (their mother) is an amazing woman. I am so blessed to have her in my life. I couldn’t have chosen better for my son.

Next post-a Mother's Day Food Treat

Stay tuned next week for a fun treat to make for Mother’s Day. You already have a card made (Create a Mother's Day Card Mobile), have a gift, and know there is a food treat idea coming. Aren’t you on the ball?

Let me know how the Mother’s Day Handprint Flower Dish Towel project time goes!!

Here's a couple other fun handprint art ideas- Special Family Handprint Art and FingerPrint Art.