When my sister had her first baby last spring, I wanted to give her something that wasn't a soft toy. She had soft toys. She had approximately forty soft toys, sent by well-meaning people in the weeks before and after the birth. What she didn't have was something that would still be meaningful in ten years — something that captured this specific moment, this specific family, at this specific size.
I found the Petit Artichaut Family Colors Hand Print Kit on ALTOE and ordered it on instinct. It turned out to be the best gift I've ever given anyone. Here's the full story.
What I Was Looking For
New baby gifts tend to fall into categories: practical (nappies, muslins, the things you actually need), sentimental (keepsakes, memory boxes, personalised items), and decorative (things that look nice in a nursery). The best gifts manage to be all three at once, and those are rare.
The hand print kit caught my attention because it was something the family would make together rather than something I'd chosen for them. The keepsake would be theirs in a way that a personalised frame or a memory box isn't — it would contain their actual hands, at this actual size, in this actual moment. That felt more meaningful than anything I could select on their behalf.
What the Kit Contains
The kit is more considered than I'd expected from the outside. Five transparent plexiglass panels — one for each family member, with room to grow — a wooden display base, five paint tubes in different colours, an application roller, and clear instructions. The panels layer together on the base to create a single display piece where all the handprints overlap and combine into a colourful, multi-layered composition.
The paints are baby-safe, which is the detail that makes the whole thing possible with a newborn. You can press a tiny hand into the paint without any anxiety about what it's touching. The colours are vivid and complementary — designed to work together when layered rather than clash.
The dimensions are compact: 20.5 x 21.5 x 5cm. It's a display piece that fits on a shelf or a mantelpiece without dominating the room, which is the right scale for something that's meant to be lived with rather than stored away.
Making It Together
My sister told me about the making of it a few weeks after I gave it to her. She and her partner had done it on a Sunday afternoon when the baby was about six weeks old — each of them choosing a colour, applying their handprint to their panel, and then pressing the baby's tiny hand into hers last. The baby, she said, was entirely unbothered by the process and fell asleep immediately afterwards, which she took as a sign of approval.
The layering of the panels was the moment it became something. Individually, each handprint is just a handprint. Together, overlapping on the wooden base, they become a composition — the baby's small hand visible through the layers of the parents' larger ones, the colours mixing where they overlap. She sent me a photograph of it assembled and I cried, which I was not expecting to do about a craft kit.
Where It Lives Now
It's on the mantelpiece in their living room. Not in the nursery — in the main living space, where it's the first thing you see when you walk in. Every visitor asks about it. My sister has explained the kit to more people than she can count. It has become, without anyone planning for this, a conversation piece and a centrepiece simultaneously.
The baby is now fourteen months old. The handprint on the panel is tiny in a way that is already remarkable — her hands are so much bigger now that the panel feels like a record of something that has already passed. That's the thing about keepsakes made at a specific moment: they become more meaningful as time passes, not less. In ten years that tiny handprint will be extraordinary.
I Bought Three More
I have since bought this kit for two more new parents and kept one for myself — my partner and I made ours with our dog, which required some creative interpretation of the instructions and a very patient Labrador, but the result is on our kitchen shelf and I love it unreasonably.
It has become my default new baby gift. Not because it's easy — it requires the family to actually do something, which is a higher ask than a soft toy — but because the result is something they will keep. In a world of gifts that get used up, grown out of, or quietly donated, something that ends up on the mantelpiece and stays there is worth more than its price suggests.
What It Changed
My approach to giving gifts. That sounds grand but it's true. The hand print kit showed me what a gift can be when it asks something of the recipient rather than just providing something for them. The making of it is part of the gift. The afternoon spent pressing hands into paint, the moment the panels are layered together, the decision about where to put it — all of that is part of what you're giving. The object on the mantelpiece is the record of an experience, not just a thing.
If you are looking for a new baby gift that will still be on the mantelpiece in ten years, this is it. I have never given anything that has been received with more genuine emotion, and I have been giving gifts for a long time.
Get Yours
👉 Shop the Petit Artichaut Family Colors Hand Print Kit on ALTOE
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Written by Aoife Brennan. All opinions are her own.
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