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Try this handprint jellyfish painting at home

Does your child constantly want to finger paint? Or get paint all over their hands while painting with a brush anyways? Here’s a cute and easy way to use those little hands covered in paint we created while finger painting!

Materials needed

• Washable paint in blue, white and any color you’d like
• 8 x 10 inch Canvas
• Fine point black marker
• Painting shirt or smock
• Paint brush

How to create the handprint jellyfish painting

Our best advice is have two canvases out. Let your child go wild with one while you create the handprint jellyfish on the other. My son loved practicing “high fives” with the paint on the extra canvas. And have fun with it! You’ll notice in ours that two of the handprints are a little smudged, but the jellyfish still turned out cute!

Blue canvas background

First, have your child paint the entire canvas blue. We started with straight blue, but that was a little dark for us. So we decided to mix white with the blue for a lighter shade. Once my son had finished as much as he wanted to paint, I painted the rest and smoothed out the thicker paint from him.

Optional step

If you want a little more depth in the background, you can add a little more white with a dry brush. As pictured here, we took a dry sponge brush with a little white paint on it and brushed it over the blue until the white paint wasn’t shiny anymore.

Paint their hands

Once the background paint is dry, paint your child’s hand with the color you want your handprint jellyfish to be. Your child will probably want to squish the brush which may slow you down a tad but is great for their sensory development through messy play. You want them to have a complete layer of paint covering their hand, but no paint dripping off.

Handprint jellyfish

When their hand is completely painted, now’s the time to make the handprints. We tried to get a nice, clean handprint with open fingered, but that’s a challenge with a 2 year old. But the jellyfish still came out cute! You will have to help them with the handprint to make sure they press down each finger enough.

Add the outline and eyes

Once the paint has dried, take a fine point black marker and draw on the eyes and a rough outline of a jellyfish. If you happen to have markers that are the same color as the paint, you can also add more jellyfish tentacles.

Optional: Thumbprint mom and baby fish

After the handprint jellyfish, we had some extra room on our canvas. We decided to add a little school of fish with mom and child’s thumbprints. These cute fish were inspired by Ed Emberley’s Complete Funprint Drawing Book.

Don’t forget to write to write the child’s name and year on the back! And if you already have your paint out, try these other cute painting projects for kids:

Handprint flower painting

Another fun project to complete while your child is finger painting and already has paint all over their hands. This is a great painting to make using both handprints and fingerprints! The full how-to is here.

Cotton ball painting

If you need a little less structure with paint or your child doesn’t like the feeling of the paint on their hands, try painting with a cotton ball instead! Here’s a way to keep hands mostly clean while still exploring the benefits of painting. Check out the full activity here.