Kids love to have something to paint which will make this a kid favorite. Use your imagination and adapt this photo holder for any holiday or occasion. Paint the clothespin red and write "Christmas 2011" to hold your annual Christmas picture.

Craft Supplies:

• Giant wooden clothespin, approximately 6" tall
• Acrylic paint or watercolors
• Paintbrush
• Optional: Stick on craft foam letters, markers, paint pens, paint i squeeze bottles, glitter glue in squeeze bottles.

1. Take the clothespin apart by sliding the two wooden pieces out from the metal spring mechanism.
2. Paint one side and all edges of both wooden pieces. Let dry then flip over and paint the remaining side. You can use water colors or acrylic paint. On our red photo holder, we used water colors but had to paint several coats to obtain a dark enough color. Our blue holder was painted with acrylic paint and covered adequately with just one coat.
3. Once completely dry, reassemble the clothespin and decorate the front side of it. On the red photo holder, we used a permanent marker to write "#1 Dad" then made little dots using silver glitter fabric paint in a squeeze bottle. You could also use glitter glue in a squeeze bottle. The words could be written with paint in a squeeze bottle or paint pens. On our teacher photo clip, we used stick on craft foam letters to write "A+ Teacher". There were no + signs in our package of letters so we cut up other letters to make our own plus sign.
4. Squeeze the bottom of the clothespin to open the top and place a photo in it. Then, simply stand up and your photo holder is complete.

Idea: If you have a wood burning tool, before painting, use that to write your message on the clothespin. Water colors work very well on wood burnt pieces because the wood burning detail still shows through the water colors.

Printable Instructions

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