Snowman Ornament

Just look at this pitiful fella!  He came on a Christmas present I received as a child and I've been lugging him around all these years.  Well, I can't say lugging; he's tiny.  It suddenly occurred to me that I could make another!  Why I never thought of this before, I just don't know.

Click through for the tutorial!

Gather your supplies.  You'll need white chenille stems, the straight kind and the bumpy kind, some black felt, small holiday doodads (I had some candy canes the other day, but who knows where they went!), scissors, hot glue gun and glue, needle nose pliers if you want, and wire snips if you don't want to wreck your scissors.  And you need some kind of a white ball for the head.  I made some little needle felted balls out of wool, but you could use white wooden beads, or paper mache balls.

First you'll make a hat.  From the black felt, cut out a circle for the hat brim.  Eyeball the size; you'll want it hat size in relation to the ball that is the snowman head.  Cut out a rectangular strip of black felt about 2 inches long.  How wide will depend on what kind of hat you want.  Make it taller for a stovepipe hat, and shorter for something more appropriate for snowman business attire.

**Edit** Draw a face on the snowman head with a permanent marker. 

Roll up the strip and apply hot glue on the end.  Don't burn yourself!

Next, glue the rolled up part to the brim part.

Now you need some kind of sharp pointy object to poke a hole in the bottom of the head.  Does anyone else find this picture just a little morbid?  In a good way;)  Poke a good hole, add some glue, and... oh, oh.  I just realized I'm missing a picture.  Opps!  I'll be right back!

I'm back!  Fold the ends of one chenille stem to the middle and wrap the ends around to hold.  Then fold the whole thing in half.  Now you can glue these in the hole you made in the head.

At this point I realized that the color of the chenille didn't match my off-white colored snowball heads.  So I brewed a cup of black tea and gave them a quick dunk.  Oh yeah, cut some arms from the plain chenille.  You need just one piece for each snowman.  Dunk them in the tea too.  After the tea bath, use a towel to press the excess tea out and fluff them up again.  Let them dry.

Put the plain stem at the neck area of the body and twist once around.

Now tie a ribbon or piece of yarn around his neck and glue a thingamajig in his hand.  If you want to use him as a gift topper, then twist another piece of chenille around.  He looks like he could be related to the old guy, yeah?

Hope your week is off to a fabulous start!  I'm heading out to a coral reef meeting.  I've started a blog for the project if you want to follow our progress.  I'll keep you posted over here too.   I'd better hurry!  I sure hope I have some clean clothes......