7 DAYS LEFT: Clay Pot Pilgrim

Let’s start this party off right with one of my newest projects!  I had so much fun making this clay pot pilgrim!  It was pretty inexpensive to make and turned out so cute!!  I will be doing a boy pilgrim later this week to join her.  So stay tuned!! J  I got the original idea for this project from THIS BLOG and put my own spin on it.  Overall, I think it is such a cute project, especially where it is hard to find Thanksgiving decor these days.





The supplies I used for this project are:

-1 small clay pot

-black and white felt
-hot glue gun
-black acrylic paint 
-yellow or brown yarn for hair ( I used quite a bit for her hair)
-black sharpie
-thin black ribbon or yarn
-1 wooden sphere knobs, (got these at Joann's in a pack of 4)
-sponge paint brush
-scissors

Here is a picture of the wooden knobs, just because they are sometimes hard to find.  I found them in the wood aisle at Joann's:

This project has a lot of detailed work that was hard to capture with photos, so just do your best!  It will give you the opportunity to experiment a little and make it your own.  The first thing I did was paint the small clay pot with the black acrylic paint.  Sometimes you have to paint two thicker layers of paint on the pot just to cover of the clay pot's orange color underneath.

After rinsing out the sponge brush, I cut out a square white piece of felt, like shown below.  I folded it in half so that I could figure out where to cut the little triangle piece out. 

After making sure the black paint had dried, I centered the felt square on the bottom of the clay pot and hot glued it down.  Then it was time for the head!

For the head, I used a sharpie to draw on the eyes, nose, and mouth.  The ink has a tendency to bleed out a little, so I might even use a marker with a smaller tip or maybe even a sharpie pen.  The nice thing about this is that you can make your pilgrim look like you want it to.  I looked up face ideas on Pinterest and tried to duplicate one that I saw.  Mine actually ended up looking a little more like Minnie Mouse than I had planned. Haha!  But, it’s okay! She’s still cute. :) After drawing the face, I started with the hair.

The hair was kind of hard.  Sometimes you just have to experiment a little.  I cut like 3-inch pieces of yarn like crazy and just started gluing them to her head like shown below.  

If you want her to have braids, you can cut the yarn in longer pieces and then braid them on the sides.  The back of the head doesn’t matter too much because you are going to cover it with a bonnet.  I wanted my pilgrim to have a bun, so I just cut all the yarn off at the neck (at the flat part of the wood sphere), gluing the ends of her hair to just above the base on her head so it doesn’t look like she has short hair.  You can make sure all the hair is positioned right.  If there are any pieces moving around, just hot glue them down.  I even hot glued the hair to the side of her face so it didn't move into her face.

I made the bun by cutting a bunch of about 3.5 inch pieces.  Then, I twisted them and wound them in a circle like you would with a normal bun.  It’s hard to explain, but maybe by the bun below you can figure out how I did it.

I hot glued all the loose ends on the back to the side of her head.  And it looked like this!

At this point, I glued her head onto the clay pot, making sure that it was centered right.  Then, it was time for the bonnet.  I’m mad because I totally forgot to take pictures while doing it, but I will do my best to explain.  I first cut a strip of white felt for the brim of the bonnet.  

I then cut a bigger square of black felt that had an equal width as the white strip.  

Make sure to keep measuring it to her head in the process to make sure that it looks and sits the way that you want it to.

After the main top part of the bonnet, I made the back part of the bonnet.  

I had to measure it to make sure that it covered the back of her head completely and then had room to glue it to the top part of the bonnet,  To glue the two pieces together.  I laid down the back piece and glued the edges of the top piece to the back piece.  I had to fold and gather them in to glue them to the back piece.

Here is the final bonnet product!

You can put the bonnet on her head to make sure that it sits on her head the way you want it.  If not, fix it up to how you want it.  For the bow in the front, I used some cross stitching thread just because that is what I had on hand.  However, I would use either thin black ribbon or black thread.  Just tie a bow and hot glue it to the front.  I just put a dot of glue on the back of the main knot part of the bow and stuck it on.  If you are having a hard time tying a good bow, just look up tutorials on YouTube or Pinterest.

You now have the final product!

I hope that you enjoyed making this pilgrim as much as I did!  Thank you so much for joining me on my first blogging adventure!  If you have any questions, please comment below!  Make sure to hit the follow button on the top, left corner of this page.  Also, follow me on Pinterest by clicking HERE.

TOMORROW:  We will be continuing our countdown to Thanksgiving!  I will be posting some fun and useful Thanksgiving kitchen ideas from multiple bloggers.  If you go to my "Crafting Fun" page, there will be a list of supplies for the next craft that we will be doing so that you can be prepared for our next project!  I hope that you are all having a wonderful day and I want to thank you all again for joining me on my page!