Easter Craft Decor: Footprint Bunnies

We love projects around here. The kids get so excited about anything from crayons on paper to painting projects. Of course, because paint is the messiest and scissors are the most difficult, projects including one (or both) of those things in a craft makes it a sure-fire win.

While we don’t do a lot of outlandish things around the holidays, I typically find at least one holiday themed craft for them to do. I love having those projects for future holiday decorations. My favorite kind of holiday crafts are the watch-me-grow kind that show some sort of change in their artistic skill or physical growth. Our most recent craft was for Easter and it involved some pretty cute little feet.

Bunny Footprint Easter Craft

Since we just had a new addition in our family, I thought something using handprints or footprints would be perfect. Footprints are a lot easier to do with newborns that want to keep their hands tightly curled into fists.

I got a blank wooden Easter egg sign from Target’s Dollar Spot that was painted a Robin’s egg blue with metallic gold specks. I keep acrylic craft paint on hand. Wipes work great for quickly cleaning up the wet paint both from the skin and if any got on our tile.

I had the kids do a footprint on a piece of cardstock paper right before doing the print on the wooden egg. This gave me a practice sheet for the footprints and one Kniya and Kaleb could paint finishing touches on later. I chose to keep the bunnies a natural color so that they wouldn’t look cartoonish. Kniya thought it was kind of boring, so we gave her rabbit a piebald coat.

Even Kamden (18 months old) did a great job holding his little foot still and letting me apply the paint. I had him go right after Kniya so he could see what he was supposed to do. His fat little foot made the perfect, fluffy white bunny.

In order to be sure the tail would show up, I added a bit of grey into my “white” bunny color and a little bit of burnt umber into the lightest piebald bunny color (so the bunnies didn’t actually have any pure white on their body colors).

The trick in doing good footprints is getting the kids to hold somewhat still and making sure all areas of the foot and toes are pressed down firmly without the foot sliding at all.

Painting the Bunnies

The rabbit ear shape is important, since the footprint alone won’t be enough to look like a rabbit. The ears get wider in the middle and are pointy at the top. We used the same paint color as whatever was at the top of the “head” (or on their heel).

Adding the Details

Use the light, off-white color of the bunny to paint egg shapes on the ground around the rabbits. Add tails with pure white on the lighter bunnies and use the light off-white for tails on the darker bunnies. The kids decorated eggs near the rabbits on the paper and I did the eggs on the sign using blue, pink and yellow.

We then added grass around the eggs and the bottom of the rabbits with green paint. Kniya did most of the painting on their paper picture, but Kaleb helped some too.

The result turned out super cute. I especially love Kam’s fat footprint and Klay’s tiny one. Can you see that I also added the year to the right side in green next to the eggs? I always make sure to include the date so I remember exactly how old they were.