Before Meeting Prep: Wash T-shirts with no fabric softener. Purchase or gather:

• acrylic paints – 1 color for each girl. and foam plate to pour paint onto.
• Foam brushes to apply paint to hands.
• You’ll also need fabric medium to mix in with the acrylic paint.
• Bottle(s) of fabric puffy paint, to later add names and troop number.
• A piece of cardboard to insert between layers of shirt, so you dont get bleed through (you could use newspaper too).
• a disappearing fabric marker or pencil.
• And a dinner plate to trace a circle as a guide for the handprints.

Prep shirts at the meeting by inserting the cardboard and draw on a circle with the fabric marker using the plate as a guide. Lay out the shirts at one side of your meeting place. Select girls to come over one at a time. Have another activity going on with your co-leader at other side of group. Let each girl choose their color and give them a little bit of paint and fabric medium to stir together (according to fabric medium package instructions). Apply the paint to one hand and using the circle as a guide press down on the shirt. Do every girl’s hand for each shirt. After all have been printed, and mostly dry – add the names to the hands and “Friendship Circle” in the middle, and your troop number at the bottom. Makes great shirts for those times the girls aren’t wearing the full uniform, but want to look like a troop!

Do this craft in accordance with learning the Girl Scout Friendship Circle:

Meaning: The friendship circle is often formed at the end of meetings or campfires as a sort of closing ceremony. Everyone gathers in a circle where they cross their right arm over their left in front of them and hold hands with the people on either side. Once everyone is silent, the leader starts the friendship squeeze which is passed from hand to hand. Often the girls will make a wish after their hand has been squeezed before they pass the squeeze along. Also, in some larger groups, the girls put their right foot out into the circle when they receive the friendship squeeze, so that everyone can see it travel along the circle.