“This liturgical season is about shaping softened hearts, making them ready for our coming King.” -Bishop Barron from Word on Fire.

As I listened to Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon from the first Sunday of Advent this year, I couldn’t wait to start creating our own version of the baby Jesus inspired by Jill Howarth’s The ABCs of Christmas. Helping my daughters try to understand the real meaning of Christmas for us was the most important thing I could do this season. Actually, anytime I sit down to read Bible stories, Christian children’s books, or even just to teach them about who God is and how to pray, I cannot think of anything more important I could be doing with my time. Couple that feeling with creating art inspired by our faith… well that’s just the best thing EVER for me. I hope to be doing more projects like this in the future.

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The first time I flipped through this precious board book, I couldn’t help but smile. Not only is the cover spectacular with it’s glittery goodness, but the adorable illustrations didn’t shy away from the Christ in Christmas. It’s a simple, beautiful and meaningful read for my little ones. It was part of our Advent calendar of picture books, but boy, reinforcing this message of Christmas is the best gift I could’ve given them.

Here is what you need to make this baby Jesus:

*We painted some plain white sulphite (heavyweight construction) paper with metallic gold paint the day before this project. You can use white paper and have the kids color it or paint it the day of the project if you wish! I didn’t have Kwik Stix paint sticks at the time, but using a gold paint stick to color the body would’ve saved some time!

This project (like most of my projects) was able to be done in one quick art session (about 30-40 minutes). If you want it to go faster, you could have the circles pre-cut. My daughter (4 years old) enjoys practicing her tracing, so she helped with that.

Trace the paper plate onto the teal or blue paper. Then trace the smaller circle onto the skin tone paper and cut that out too and set aside. Then fold the gold paper in half and draw a simple curved line from top to bottom and cut along the line. Unfold and open to reveal a symmetrical oval shape for the body. (baby swaddle). Refer to the video for more details.

Make sure you have your body, head, and teal or blue halo ready to glue!

Use scraps of metallic paper to cut out triangles to glue around the head and set aside. (If you are short on time, you can skip this step, but they really make the art pop!)

Glue teal circle or halo onto the yellow background in the top third section of the paper. Dip the cardboard into white paint and print radial lines around the halo. Add white painted circles around the edge with the sponge brush or a regular brush. Let dry for a minute or two.

Carefully glue the body slightly overlapping the blue circle. Draw a face and hair to the tan paper for the head and carefully glue to the center of the teal circle overlapping the gold paper body. Glue the triangles around the head.

If you have a star shaped sponge brush, add white painted stars to the background. You could also use q-tips and just add white dots for stars.

Finish up by adding foam star stickers to the background. If you are up to adding glitter, paint on some Mod Podge to the body and SPRINKLE some gold glitter. My daughter grabbed the glitter and dumped a ton on hers. Whoops! But she had fun. 😉 You could also go a less-mess route and paint on gold glitter paint for some added sparkle!

The sparkly foam stickers really added something special to this. And there you have it!

​O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel

Merry Christmas to you and your little ones. And may the peace of Christ comfort us this season and always.

Let us know what you think! If you read this book and did the project, please tag us on Instagram: @littleholyhearts.
​We’d love to see what you make.