Thanksgiving Craft: Turkey Necklace

Let me give you a little insight into my crafy-ness. I always see great ideas and then somehow never have the right supplies, so I always end up making up something different that doesn’t always quite work right. (See Indian Corn Napkin Rings.) Yesterday I was determined to make a turkey craft with the kids. I looked through my old Family Fun magazines, Lydia’s Clubhouse Jr and realized a turkey craft consists of the following:

• a body {a flower pot, a ball, a cookie, an appple, etc.}
• feathers {felt, constrution paper, actual feathers, leaves, etc.}
• face {drawn or glued on}

So. I decided to look around our craft closet to see what if I could find those 3 things. And what do you know? I actually figured something cute out—turkey necklaces!

All you need is:

• bottlecaps {I stole mine from an old drink machine while I was on vacation}

• necklaces {I have some random ball and chain necklaces from old necklaces, but string or ribbon would be nice, too}

• wiggly eyes

• scraps of craft foam {cut feathers, beak and waddle from this!}

• hot glue gun

After we painted our bottlecaps {not sure where that pictures is…}, I put a big line of hot glue on the inside top of the bottlecap. We pressed three little feathers into the glue. My feathers looked kinda like fat crayons, you could probably do better.

Once the feathers were in I put another dollop of glue on the back and pressed the necklace in. Now, here’s my big hot glue tip. I learned this from my mom who used to use a hot glue pan to make wreaths for craft shows—if you have to press something into hot glue, just lick your finger first. It might be warm, but you won’t get burnt and it won’t stick to you!

We added a little waddle to Lydia’s necklace and gave it a little bitty beak because she said hers was a baby.

This is Asa’s necklace. Yup, he really painted that by himself.

I have to admit that the necklaces hang a little funny. Maybe it would have been better to do them backwards and have the feathers on the flat part of the bottlecap? Actually, that would probably work really well if you flattened it with a hammer, first. It might make the feathers stand out more. Then the beak and eyes could have been “inside” the bottlecap? Hmmm….maybe we’ll try some more and see which looks better. (See what I mean about my craftiness?)

What would have been really cute is if I had printed off a tiny circle of paper that said, GIVE THANKS TO THE LORD!  and glued it in the back! Then the kids could turn it over to say the verse! Wouldn’t that be cute?

{Oh, speaking of cute turkey jewelry, have you seen Vanessa’s turkey hair clips?}

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