Reindeer Game Crafts: Part I

Today I will start on the first part of my "Reindeer Game Crafts", which, as you could probably guess, are all crafts that have to do with reindeer. It is that time of year you know! 

Here's what you'll need:

• Brown or black yarn
• A shower ring (could be replaced by any small circular object)
• Scissors
• Sharpie (optional)
• Pencil (highly recommended)
• Glue

You'll need four arms-lengths of yarn. Here's how I measure it.
Put a piece of yarn in between your fingers, close to the ball (or bag or whatever) of yarn. Pull- keeping your fingers in the same place- the end of yarn up to your shoulder, then reach down and pull it up again. Pull it up to your shoulder four times. Ta-da! Four arms-lengths of yarn!

I used a basic white shower ring, (shown to the right) that is usually used to hold your shower curtain up.


 What you're going to want to do is tie your yarn onto the shower ring close to the place where it clips (sorry, do it closer than it is in the picture to the left, try to get it all the way to the edge). There will be a little tail. Hold the tail down and start wrapping the yarn over it as shown below. Go in the direction away from the clip.

Keep going around the ring... 

                   And around...

 And around....

Until you get here:

 

( as you can see, I moved the yarn closer to the edge)

Once you get here, you'll need to wrap over and over where the shallower part it, so that you can't see that it was skinnier there. It should look a little like this ------------->

Since I had a very long tail, I made a star-ish type thing across the middle. You don't need to do this if you don't have a long tail. If you do, though, make sure you tie it like this. Wrap it around a different string and tie a knot. I did it twice to be extra secure. Cut off the tail, if you have one. 

Yes, I just used scissors.

 Next, I cut out my reindeer head, I'm not a perfect drawer so I just looked at a picture of a cartoon reindeer and kind of based it off that (not exactly of course, but I'm sure you know what I mean). To the right is the paper I used. It's scrapbook paper and is supposed to look like a map. (It kind of reminds me of the wall at Subway!)

Here is the reindeer head all cut out.

 Next I had to cut out the legs. I made them a little chubby. To size them I just set the head out next to it, sort of in the way it would be on the ring and drew them. They look like pants right now and that's because I made them super long and the top so I could cut it down perfectly by setting it behind the ring and drawing a pencil line on the edge (shown to the right)

 To glue it, I just used Elmer's Glue-All which is available anywhere (yes, Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens, and maybe even H-E-B- haven't checked yet).

 

Make sure you put the glue on the ring, not the paper. 

Once you glue the legs on, you're done! Remember: You can turn this into an ornament just by putting another piece of yarn on.