Thanksgiving Table Spirits Tutorial!

I've been really into foraging for pine cones this fall! And I've now amassed a huge pile, that is just sitting in the middle of my kitchen table... calling to me every morning... "Come and craft with us Rhya!"

So I came up with this quick and easy project to decorate my Thanksgiving table this weekend... and it turned out pretty cute, so I thought I would share.

I'm calling these "Thanksgiving Table Spirits". They are meant to live on the table, next to your plate, and every time you touch one, you need to first reflect and then say out loud, one thing you are grateful for this holiday!

Alright onward to the tutorial!

Materials:

• Pine Cones! Get as many as you will need to give all your guests one at dinner, plus a couple more for just general fun! Foraging for the pine cones is the most fun part! Nothing like getting outside and enjoying the day while rummaging through nature!
• Acrylic paint, in any colour you would like. Note, you also don't need to paint your Table Spirits, they will look just as good in their natural colour.
• Construction paper in any colour you want. I chose mine to match the colour of the paint I was using on my Table Spirits, and also made sure to have a piece of white and brown paper to construct the flag.
• Medium sized paint brush.
• Craft glue or glue gun.
• Fine tipped permanent black marker.
• Googly eyes or you can do what I did and construct them from scratch using an air dry modeling clay ( I used the Polyform brand, picked it up from Michaels). I sculpted the eyes and then painted on the pupils when the clay had dried. I bet sculpey would work great too!

How to:

• Step one, paint your pine cones... and there are no rules here, paint them any colour you want! Or multiple colours at once. Or as I mentioned above, leave the pine cones bare! It's up to you.
• Step two, eyes! Now again, as I indicated previously, you can just use regular old googly eyes, or you can go the crafting route of creating your own eyes from scratch, using a sculpy or air drying clay, and then painting in the pupils. This is what I did, mostly because I like the effect it has, and it allows you to give your pine cones a little more character. Once you have your eyes ready, play around with their placement on the pine cone, till you find just the right position for them. Then glue them on! I used an clear drying craft glue, but I think a glue gun would have been even better! It would set quicker!
• Step three, the paper bits! In the photo above you can see the pieces that I cut out to make my arms and thank you flag! Again, you can copy those designs or just go rogue and do your own version! Essentially, I cut out two arms, a flag pole, and flag with the word "Thank You" hand written on using a fine tipped black marker. I glues the flag together and then glued it into one of the hands, and then surprise, surprise, I glued the arms and flag onto the pine cone body! As you can see, it's all about the glue! 

And that's it! The last step! Voila! You should now be staring into the eyes of your very own Thanksgiving Tree Spirit... and if you are like me... you are also probably covered in paste! So go wash up and then get your gratitude on!

Thank you for checking out the tutorial!