Last minute art gift ideas

A Christmas Plate for mom

I'm not selling anything but instead sharing something I did recently with my grandkids. I want them to start thinking of the giving part of Christmas and not just the getting part of Christmas. I know that these lessons take time and it would help if they had chores where they made money to actually buy somethings but oh well. I also like to make gift giving creative and something personal so I found a local shop that does ceramics. You go in and paint or actually apply glazes and then they fire it and you have a gift. I happened to have the twins and their brother Nathan before Thanksgiving and I took them over thinking it would be fun. It was actually fairly expensive as you pay per person for the studio time and then you buy the ceramic piece to glaze but decided to do it anyway. I first picked a plate and had all three of them paint the plate and when they were done we did hand prints on top. The underside of the plate is full of their finger prints and they each signed their names! It actually looks like a mess of colors but it is perfect. Thank goodness I limited them to Christmas colors thinking this would be a great holiday plate, as messy as it looks to everyone else, I love it! I can see their handprints, their names, written in pencil first then I went over with glaze. Rachel tried to paint a tree, Nathan wrote "I love you Mom", Megan painted hearts, It's perfect! A plate made with love, and some arguing, for their mom this Christmas. They wanted to do more but I needed to limit my expense so I found 4" tiles. I thought these were cheap and they could paint several for gifts as coasters for other grandparents etc. I was surprised to see how much they loved doing this  and really got into it. We ended up spending 4 hours there! Jennifer even painted a few things as did I, I couldn't resist! Although it wasn't a cheap way to go, it was by far the most memorable. This gift will not be forgotten in the years to come but cherished, they will relive that day and compare their handprints every year as they unpack their Christmas cookie plate.

The back of the plate

Their painted coasters that are painted on both sides so are actually reversible!