Festive Turkey

Fun Fall Turkey Craft

Want a festive craft that the whole family can do together? Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Maybe you don't have a center piece for your table. You can gather up the family and make this cute creative turkey.

Step 1: Gather all your supplies together (Not Pictured: light and dark yarn, glue gun, scissors, and tape).

Step 2: Grab 9-inch polystyrene ball and your dark-brown yarn. Start wrapping the ball neatly until it is fully covered.

Step 3: Take colorful construction paper (or in this case we used earth tone colors) and start cutting them into turkey feathers.

Step 4: Bend each feather in half (lengthwise). 

Step 5: Place your wooden craft sticks (We found wooden dowels cut in half worked better) on the back of the feather and adhere with tape.

Step 6: (optional) To make the turkey feathers more realistic, you can rip the edges to make it more rugged.

Step 7: Wrap a 4-inch polystyrene ball with light-brown yarn. 

Step 8: Using a wooden dowel, insert it into the light-brown polystyrene ball.

Step 9: Push the light-brown ball into the dark-brown ball

Step 10: Insert three wooden dowels into the bottom of the turkey to make it stable.

Step 11: Arrange the feathers into a fan shape on the backside of the turkey.

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Step 12: Glue black pom poms (we used a snippet of a pipe cleaner) to the quarter size eye cut out of white felt.

Step 13: Glue a red felt wattle (made by cutting felt teardrops) underneath the light-brown ball.

Step 14: Place the yellow beak an inch underneath the eyes.

Materials:
9-inch polystyrene ball
4-inch polystyrene ball
Thick dark-brown yarn
Thick light-brown yarn
Wooden dowels (cut in half)
Felt (black, red, white, and yellow)
Colorful construction paper

Instructions: Wrap large sphere neatly in thick dark-brown yarn, covering surface completely; knot on bottom. Wrap a 4-inch ball from light brown yarn and attach to body with a wooden dowel. Create simple facial features using felt: white circles (approximately the size of a quarter, with 1/8-inch pom-poms for pupils) for eyes, yellow triangles for the beak, and long red felt teardrops as the wattle. Cut feather shapes from colored craft paper and bend in half lengthwise to create seam. Glue wooden craft to the bottom third of the feather and insert in a fan shape on turkey body.

In addition: You can customize your turkey by writing messages of thanks on the feathers. You could also do small turkeys for place card holders out of two sizes of marshmallows, toothpicks, and frosting.