Keepsake Christmas Craft: Easily Make Hand and Footprint Reindeer

Get ready to add a sprinkle of holiday magic to your home with an adorable and easy Christmas craft! With the festive season just around the corner, there’s gazllions of DIY craft ideas you can make this Holiday season.

Is there a cuter way to celebrate than by creating delightful hand and footprint reindeers with the whole family? This engaging and family-friendly project promises heaps of fun and laughs and serves as a cherished keepsake for years to come.

Using simple materials and your little one’s (or not-so-little one’s 😅) hand and footprints, you can craft these cute reindeers to adorn your walls or hang on the Christmas tree.

Are you ready to dive into this perfect step-by-step guide to getting creative with the kids this festive season?

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4 Easy Steps to Make Reindeer Hand and Footprint Art

You’ll see here that we have made some larger sized reindeers, because my kids are not longer classed as “little ones”. Bigger kids means bigger feet and hands means bigger reindeers! 😅

But I have also made these when my kids actually were “little ones” and the resulting reindeers were so cute and teeny I couldn’t not hang them on the tree! They truly make such adorable keepsakes! (Psst” Perfect for gifting to the grandparents 😉.)

Step 01. What you need to make Christmas reindeer decor

Gather your supplies! You’ll need:

Cardstock in a variety of reindeer-like colours

Something for reindeer eyes- you could draw them yourself or use googly eyes (like we have)

Something for a reindeer nose- again, you could draw it yourself, or use a sticker or piece of felt or a pompom (like we have)

Basic craft supplies- scissors, pencil, craft glue

Step 02. How to prepare your reindeer pieces

Choose which colour cardstock will be used to create the reindeer antlers. Using a pencil, trace around both the left and right hand on the cardstock. Two antlers, two hands, right?!?

Next choose which colour cardstock you’d like to use to the reindeer head. This time trace around one foot.

Optional: Trace around the same foot again, if you’re making an ornament where the rear side of the reindeer head will be seen, or if you’d just like to extra secure the antlers in place. If you are creating a reindeer to attach to something else and the rear side will never be seen again, then you could skip the 2^nd foot outline. We decided to trace the foot outline twice but only ended up using one. 🤦‍♀️

Cut all shapes out of your cardstock . You will now have 1 (or optional, 2) identical foot/head pieces and 2 mirror image hand/antler pieces.

Step 03. Glue the reindeer pieces together

First up, take one reindeer head piece (If you cut 2, lay the other reindeer head piece to the side for now.) and both antler pieces.

FYI- the outline of the toes will be at the top of the completed reindeer head and the heel will form the chin of the reindeer.

Choose which side of the cardstock will be the face side and which will be the back hidden-from-view side. It’s entirely up to you. Kind of whether you’d rather the big toe shape to be on the upper left side of the head or on the upper right side of the head. 🤷‍♀️It doesn’t really matter!

Flip it over so the “face” side is down. Place one antler near the top/toes part of the foot/head piece so there is enough overlap to attach it but also plenty of lovely antler shape hanging outside of the head piece.

Place the other antler on the opposite side of the foot/head. When you are happy with the position of the antlers, attach them to the head piece with craft glue.

Optional: If you are using a 2^nd foot/head piece, use craft glue to affix it onto the other foot/head piece, so that the ends of the antlers are now pressed in between the 2 foot/pieces.

Step 04. Decorate your reindeer’s face

Flip the reindeer over to the “face” side. Now it’s time to actually give it a face!

Whether you want to draw on eyes or stick on googly ones, add them to the reindeer’s face.

Next up, the nose. We used a pompom, but you could easily use a sticker, a piece of felt, or just draw a nose on.

And that’s it! That’s the super cute and simple way to create a reindeer from your child’s hand- and footprints! And what’s more, it’s completely unique, because nobody else has the same hands as feet as your own kids!