Friday, December 30, 2011

Snowman Kits

I wanted a gift to give to a couple of families on my Christmas list this year and I came up with the idea for snowman kits. I am just bummed we haven't had enough snow for me to try one out yet.
And here is how I put it all together:
To make one kit, you will need 3 buttons, 8 beads, black spray paint, dowel, orange Sculpey, material for scarf, black felt, material for bag, white felt, wood glue, and sewing supplies. I bought most of my supplies on sale at JoAnns or either I had what I needed on hand already. Here is the rundown...
bag of buttons $3.59
bag of beads $3.99
shiny black spray paint $1 (from Walmart)
5/16 in dowel $0.59
sweet potato Sculpey $1.14
3/4 yrd red cozy flannel 1.87
3/4 yrd hunter cozy flannel $1.87

Start by marking off your dowel every few inches and cut with a saw. You will need 11 small sections for the eyes, mouth, and buttons. You will also need a much longer section for the nose.
Now add a little wood glue on the back of each of the buttons and inside each of the beads to be used for the eyes and mouth. Let dry.
Then give the eye and mouth pieces a couple of coats of shiny black spray paint.
I love how the carrot noses turned out. Take a scrap piece of wooden dowel and cover it with orange Sculpey, purposefully making it lumpy and imperfect. Then go at it with a butter knife making random lines all over. Follow the directions on the package and bake in the oven. I am pretty sure it took two Sculpey packages to make these three.
For the scarves I just bought the cheapest fabric I could find at JoAnns, cut it and sewed some pieces together to make it long enough. Then fray the ends if you like and you are done. In hindsight I should have looked only for fabric at least 60 inches wide and then there would be no need for sewing at all. It would have been long enough on its own.
To keep everything together make a drawstring bag with a circle bottom and sew a felt snowflake to the outside. I made my snowflake by first cutting a template out of paper (you know, the way you learned in school? By folding the paper up and then cutting up the edges with scissors?) and then pinning it to my felt to cut out.
And lastly the top hat. I love these! They were actually pretty quick to put together and turned out just how I wanted them to. I followed the tutorial at the end of this post from Make It Do. Now go make your own and hopefully you will be blessed with snow and the time to go enjoy it.

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