This is the last door sign we made last year and although I’m looking forward to pulling out their sign at Halloween… (though I want to enjoy summer first) I’m sad that we didn’t make more in the first year. I loved going through the signs that we made but am still looking forward to being able to revisit them every year and marvel at the tiny size of their little feet, hands, toes, and fingers. My other holiday themed door signs includes the Halloween Ghosts Footprint, Thanksgiving Turkey Handprint, Christmas Handprint, Footprint, and Fingerprint winter scene, and our Valentine’s Day Handprint and Footprint door sign.

I decided to paint my Easter canvas by creating bunnies. I found two ways to make them; one with an upside down foot and one with your had. I loved that with the size difference between Ada and Zoey I was able to do a variety. If I could magically do this again with the same sized feet and hands I could see adding more and overlapping them more. Maybe with a larger variety of paint colors.

Materials you need

• Canvas, light wood board, or anything that’s light enough to be hangable
• Acrylic paints
• Oil-based paint pen: text and if you want to go around the prints
• (optional) Glow paint
• (optional) Mod Podge
• Ribbon or string to hang the canvas with
• Hot glue gun
• Hot glue sticks
• Command Hook: to hang it if you haven’t set anything up

The first step is creating the background of the canvas. As I was getting Ada to design the background herself I started by selecting my colors for the bunnies (white, brown, grey, and gold) and then chose paint colors for the background based on what I already had and that would contrast against the colors chosen for the foreground. Some of the her brushwork shows the white canvas behind so if you know ahead of time that you don’t like that look and are worried it might happen or your child may leave parts of the canvas uncovered you could always start with a color wash. Just choose a background color, mix it with water, and then brush it on. This easily drips so if you’re worried about the surface you’re painting on lay out something to protect your surface.

After your background is painted and dried you can go on to create the bunnies. I decided to make the bunny in two different styles so I’d be able to get my kids’ footprints along with their hands. I decided to make the larger bunnies, created with upside down footprints, go closer to the top so it would look like they were further away and did them first as I cared more about the handprints if they overlapped. The handprints were used to create bunny heads. As there was going to be no body’s for the bunny heads I placed them at the bottom of the canvas so it would look like they were peaking out from below. When using your hands to make the bunny heads use your fingers to make the ears by splitting them apart, making a Vulcan shape,  so the two left fingers are going to turn into one ear and the right two fingers into another ear.

To make the prints themselves I used a variety of colors and painted them onto the hand or foot quickly and then dabbed it down before diaper wiping the hand or foot clean. I then went onto the next one. I love the mottled look but I could also see doing it less mottled and overlapping the prints more too.

Once the foot and handprints are completely dry you can go on to turn the prints into bunnies with paint or a paint pen.

For the handprints I turned the fingers into bunny ears by filling any of the space between the fingers making up the ears with pink paint. I also added a rounded triangle to the center of the hand for the nose. Once the paint dried I used a black oil-based paint pen to make the eyes, mouth, and whiskers. Optionally, you can also add dots in the spaces above the mouth.

For the full body footprint bunnies you need to paint the ears on top of the heel of the foot, create a muzzle and nose in the center of the heel, and add a fluffy tail on one of the sides on the lower part of the foot. I created my muzzle by painting an upside down heart with a flattened tip. After the muzzle and ears dry you can add the inner ear and nose with pink paint. Once that dries you can use your paint pen to add the whiskers and eyes.

Since the background was mostly black I decided to use a small paintbrush and gold paint to write the saying on the sign: “Hope you have a hoppy Easter”.

Once the paint dries all you need to do is flip the canvas around, choose a ribbon, cut it to size, fold it in half, tie a knot near the folded end so there’s a small loop, center the loop above the canvas, and hot glue it on. Since I had a stretched canvas I had the ribbon stretch to the bottom corners so I had more surface area to attach the ribbon. I liked how the Halloween sign had dangling ribbons so I choose to leave them long and cut them at a slant to be more decorative. Finally I dated the top of the canvas and added Ada and Zoey’s age to the bottom.

All done! You just have to hang it up now. I attached a command hook to the outside of my front door so I could hang my canvases up. If you want more details you can visit my Halloween Ghosts door sign post.

I hope you have a very Hoppy Easter!

My other holiday themed door signs include the Halloween Ghosts Footprint, Thanksgiving Turkey Handprint, Christmas Handprint, Footprint, and Fingerprint winter scene, and Valentine’s Day Handprint and Footprint door sign. I would love to see what you create! Feel free to share what you make in the comments below, through a post on my Facebook page, or by tagging me through Instagram.