Saturday was my mother’s birthday.  She has been really unwell with a nasty kidney infection and only just got out of hospital on Thursday after spending Mother’s day there. I knew just the thing that would cheer her up, homemade cards!

The kids usually make cards every year but this would be the first time O would get to make one for her 🙂

Now this isn’t his first attempt at becoming an artist, we have done finger painting and handprints before now. But the kids had already been using the watercolours to paint theirs so figured we would give it a try and not worry about dragging more stuff out of the cupboard.

Just so there was a little something extra on the card I wrote Nain on it, which is Welsh for Grandmother. At first I tried to paint his hand but he was more interested in grabbing the brush so I let him use it himself and just loaded it up with paint.

Each time I loaded the brush I put it down on the card so he would make some marks while he tried to pick it up and give him some idea of what it does.

Of course he also wanted to make himself a little more colourful!

I was lucky to have E&Ff sitting either side of him giving him a little help, lots of encouragement and plenty of praise, also to grab him when he made a beeline for the water glass while I had my hands full of camera! Seriously, if you ever want to do an in action photo shoot with babies get yourself a set of teenage twin girls as assistants!(I have a set who would gladly work for tea and cake)

In all I think it worked out quite well, we managed to get more paint on the card than the child which is always a bonus, plus he had a great time 🙂

Here he is showing off his creation

And here are all of their cards together

Needless to say my mother loved them all and they really did cheer her up. We even got to visit for a while which she hasn’t had the energy for, for a few weeks which was nice.

Do your kids like making birthday cards for family?