India crafts: Mehndi Handprints

And we're back!  The Whirl Girl has been joined by a Twirl Guy, now almost two weeks old.  The Whirl Girl is eager for him to join us in our project-making, and I barely have the heart to tell her that it will be a long while before he will be able to do so.  Our crafts and cooking time has been limited but we're forging ahead with a couple more projects for the month.

First up is mehndi hand prints.  Mehndi or henna is used to decorate women's hands in India for festive occasions - especially holidays and weddings.  Designs are drawn free-form using a tube of paste made from henna leaves and come in varying degrees of elaborateness.  There are often flower and peacock motifs.

photo from National Geographic

I thought it would be fun for The Whirl Girl to draw her own mehndi designs, so we cut out her own handprints on construction paper and she used colored pencils to color Indian-inspired designs.  I printed out a couple of templates from this site for examples.

My seven-year-old niece is visiting and she made some too.   It was just as much fun for her age group as The Whirl Girl's.

Supplies:

• cardstock
• colored construction paper
• crayons or colored pencils
• scissors
• glue
• templates for inspiration

Step One: Trace handprint on colored paper.  

Step Two: Color in designs on the handprints.

Step Three: Cut out handprints.

Step Four: Glue on to cardstock.

All done!