Toddler DIY Father's Day Keepsake {Make It Monday With Gymboree!}

With Father's Day next week, it's the perfect time to start thinking about what to have the kids give their dads (or grandpa's!) for this special day!

In my opinion, there is nothing better than a handmade keepsake that the family can hang onto months and years to come, and having a toddler in the house is the perfect opportunity to have them express creativity.

For Mother's Day I did a brief post about letting your child express themselves through painting and mentioned how a canvas can be a great gift for mother's and grandmothers. We sent our moms a hand painted canvas from Little Mister and they both went nuts over them and commented on how it was the best Mother's Day gift they had received. Although I loved how they turned out, I felt like they were missing just a little something, so when Gymboree asked me to team up for their Father's Day Make It Monday, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to add to complete the look of the canvas's! 

What I love most about this project is that you and your child really have free reign on how you design your project and what you want to do with it. Rather than giving you an exact tutorial/how to, I'm going to simply show you what we did so that you can get inspired to create your own keepsake for Dad (or grandpa!).

I started by writing out Happy Father's Day in bubble letters (I attempted to dig up my bubble letter skills from middle school, as you can see they weren't the best) lightly on my canvas. 

I then painted in the letters in three different colors! I would recommend doing this part when you toddler is distracted or napping, because as you can see Little Mister smudged some of the paint toward the bottom of the letters. 

The next step is the most fun! Let your toddler paint to their hearts content! Little Mister started with the paint brush then transitioned into finger painting! He loved the finger painting part and had it all over his face and chest by the time he was finished!

To complete the look of this canvas, I really wanted to add a handprint of footprint to the corner, but Little Mister decided (on multiple occasions) that he did not want to cooperate with this part. Unfortunately the finished look to my canvas keepsake still isn't completely finished, but I know daddy will love it regardless!

This was our finished canvas that we will be wrapping up and giving to daddy this Father's Day! He already took a sneak peek and said that he loved it and would be hanging it in his garage (where he works out!). We had a lot of fun making this canvas and plan to make a couple more that say "Happy Father's Day Grandpa" for the grandpa's in our life!