Are you looking for a creative and useful Christmas gift your toddler can make for grandparents, daycare providers, aunts, and uncles?
These DIY Christmas tea towels are so easy that you and your toddler can easily whip them up in 15 minutes or less. And the best part is that they’re actually useful homemade gifts that grown-ups will genuinely use and enjoy.
Fun for toddlers to make AND useful for adults year-round? Sounds like a win-win!
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🖌️ Materials 🧼 Protect 🤓 Prepare ⭐ Dip and Stamp 📝 A Few Tips To Make Things Successful 💡 Modification Ideas
As we’ve started getting ready for the holidays this year, my toddler has been excited to jump on the DIY bandwagon and make presents for his favorite people.
But I wanted to find something that was useful and would actually be enjoyed by the recipient instead of another toddler craft to clutter up the fridge. (I know they’re cute, but you can only have so many handprint crafts at a time…)
Luckily, I was in a craft gift exchange and one of the gifts inspired the most simple and adorable Christmas gift EVER that’s perfect for little hands to put together.
Let’s dive right in with a quick tutorial, some helpful tips and tricks, and a few easy modification ideas to make this a super unique and successful Christmas craft for toddlers and preschoolers.
Materials:
- Tea Towels or flour sacks
- Fabric Paint
- Cookie Cutters
- Paper Plates
- Garbage Bags
- Paint Smock
Grab all of your supplies here:
Protect:
This craft can get a bit messy, so it’s best to take a few minutes to prep your workspace so you save time cleaning up or worrying about stains later.
Lay out some garbage bags to protect your work surface.
Then grab your favorite toddler paint smock and help your toddler suit up for your Christmas craft.
Prepare:
After your toddler and workspace are ready to go, open up your tea towels, lay them flat, and pour some fabric paint onto a paper plate.
Use a separate plate to prep each color and use enough paint that it will cover the length and width of your full cookie cutter, with a little extra space.
We had the most success adding a liberal amount of paint so we had plenty to grab with our cookie cutters versus just pouring a thin layer and more or less painting our paper plates.
Don’t forget to get your toddler involved in this part of the project! My 3 year old loved unfolding each of the tea towels and squirting a giant puddle of paint onto each of our paper plates.
Dip and Stamp:
Now you’re ready to go!
Help your toddler to dip the cookie cutter into the paint. Move around the cookie cutter and do your best to get an even coat across the entire cookie cutter so you don’t have bald spots.
Then give your toddler the cookie cutter and let them stamp up each of the tea towels wherever their creativity takes them.
Encourage your toddler to press firmly on each of the edges of the cookie cutter before lifting it up.
You can reapply paint before each stamp if you’re looking for more even coverage. Or you can let your toddler get creative and have a variety of thick and thin prints throughout their towels.
Just remember, this doesn’t have to be perfect and grandparents and other loved ones are going to think your toddler’s work is much more adorable than a perfectly stamped towel. So don’t worry if the shapes aren’t evenly spaced, the paint drips a little, or your little one decides to stamp 10 Christmas trees in one corner and leave the rest of the towel blank. (Yup, I’m totally speaking from experience on the last one 😅)
A Few Tips To Make Things Successful:
Tip #1:
If you’re making lots of Christmas tea towels for all of your loved ones, use the biggest work space you can find by using several tables, all of your countertops, or clearing the floor and laying out as many as you can. Since these will need to dry, it saves a ton of time if you can lay out and work on several at a time.
Tip #2:
Use the thickest side of your cookie cutter as the stamp. We wanted thick, dramatic stamps, especially because our toddler liked to use the stamp several times before reapplying paint. If there’s a thick and a thin side of your cookie cutter, use the thickest side as the stamp side.
Tip #3:
Help your toddler dip the cookie cutter. This part can be a little tricky because you want to be sure the paint gets on the full cookie cutter. Help your little one to dip the cookie cutter into the paint and then rotate it and wiggle it around to be sure you have a full, even coat.
Tip #4:
If you’re like us and running low on space, feel free to hang a towel on each of your chairs so you free up your table and can make double the amount of tea towels before taking the time to let everything dry.
Modification Ideas:
Modification #1:
I think it would be adorable to gift your loved ones a full set.
Grab cookie cutters for each season, and then create separate tea towels for each stamp. (for example, a heart, a shamrock, an Easter egg, an American Flag, a pumpkin, a turkey, and a Santa hat)
After your toddler is done decorating them, bundle up the full set and give them to your loved ones.
Modification #2:
If you’re worried about giving a “sentimental” (aka, it’s adorable that your toddler made it but it’s got a lot of blemishes and imperfections) gift that won’t look very nice, feel free to create a little bundle.
Include one towel that your toddler made, adorable imperfections and all, and include one towel that you made that’s a bit more polished and presentable.
Modification #3:
Ditch the cookie cutters and use your toddlers hands and feet to decorate your tea towels.
I also think this would be the most adorable gift EVER. Instead of stamping cookie cutters all over your tea towel, consider using their handprint to stamp one or two pictures on the top and/or bottom of the tea towel. (Now that’s a handprint gift I can get behind!)
There are so many ideas for handprint crafts for babies and toddlers, so feel free to mix and match your favorites or create a theme, like holidays or animals, to create a full set for your gift.
This is also a great way to modify the craft for younger toddlers or babies if you want to get them involved but they’re a little too young to use the cookie cutter stamps.
Modification #4:
Level up your tea towel gift by creating a little gift bundle. You can add a little cleaning bucket, some sponges, and some soap to round out your gift and give a great balance of sweet and sentimental mixed with super useful and practical.
I can’t stress how easy these were to make. And my toddler was beaming as he talked about who he was going to give each of his towels to after they dried. (Spoiler Alert: Mom didn’t make the list 😅)
They’re easy to make, cheap to put together, and even non-crafty people like me can put together an adorable gift that grandparents will love to hang on their oven and show off all year round.
Will you try these easy DIY Christmas tea towels with your kids?
*Piece of Cake Parenting is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Please visit Piece of Cake Parenting’s Terms of Service, Disclaimer, and Privacy Policy for more information.