It’s August in Houston, which means I am ready for fall!  Bring on the cooler temperatures and college football!  The first kick-off may still be a month away, but that won’t stop my wishful thinking…

In our house, we have a University of Texas alum (Hook ‘Em!) and a University of Alabama alum (Roll Tide!), so I’m making a canvas for each.  These will be cute to display during football season!  [I may be a little partial in starting with UT.]  Here’s a sneak peek of the finished product.

Does that get you in the football spirit?  Here’s what you’ll need for this project (the paint & ribbon on the right are for the upcoming Alabama canvas if you couldn’t tell…).

• Blank canvas (8″ x 10″ is good for single footprint, 11″ x 14″ for two footprints)
• Burnt orange craft paint
• White craft paint for touch-ups, if needed
• Sponge brush
• Cute coordinating ribbon (these are from Hobby Lobby)
• Small paintbrush for detail
• Black sharpie
• Staple gun

Here’s the small paintbrush I used for the detail painting, which is from Hobby Lobby.  I splurged a little on it, and it was worth it!  It paints nice, smooth lines.

Step 1. Apply a generous coat of the burnt orange paint to the bottom of your child’s foot to get a good footprint.  Make sure to position the footprints so you leave room for the horns and the ribbon border.  These are my son and daughter’s footprints below.

Step 2. After the footprints have dried, sketch with pencil the horns, ears, and “hook ’em!” text.  I just free-handed this (you can probably tell!), and don’t be afraid to erase and re-draw as needed.  I looked at the similar canvas on this blog as my example.

Step 3. After painting the horns and ears, the next step is going over the writing with a Sharpie marker.

Here’s the finished paint and Sharpie on a one-foot canvas for comparison.

Step 4. If there’s any stray paint or pencil markings that didn’t fully erase, you can use white craft paint to cover them up.

Step 5. I think a ribbon border is the easiest and cutest way to finish off a canvas.  If I trusted my painting skills more, I might try painting a football field in the background or painting a cute border.  But ribbon is a safe bet for me.

To attach the ribbon, I used a plain jane staple gun.  You could probably also use a hot glue gun, but the ribbon won’t be quite as tight against the canvas.

Lay the ribbon along the first side of the canvas.

Wrap the edge of the ribbon around to the backside of the canvas.  Making sure it’s lined up with the edge of the canvas, staple it to the canvas frame.

Stapling is a two-handed job!  Press down on the top of the staple gun with one hand while pulling the trigger with the other.  That ensures the staple goes all the way into the frame, and the top of the staple is flush with the frame.

Make sure to pull the ribbon as tight as you can before stapling the second end of the ribbon.  You don’t want the ribbon to sag and not be flush with the edge of the canvas.

I worked on one side at a time, moving clockwise around the edges of the canvas.  Here’s a finished corner on the back of the canvas.

And here’s the back of my canvas after finishing all of the ribbon.

I think they turned out pretty cute!  It’s a fun keepsake that I’ll enjoy decorating with for many football seasons to come!  Hook ’em horns!

And for all my Aggie friends out there, you could make the footprint the vertical part of the “T” and write/paint the “A” and “M” on either side.  For any team, you can do a brown horizontal footprint, and with a couple of white paint embellishments, it looks like a football.  Stay tuned for the Alabama canvas featuring handprint elephants!